It makes sense that Steam, Epic, and the lot want to tie you down, but it shouldn't be the case.ĭigital goods need to be tied to a user not a launcher.

You should be able to take a game you own and move it to a different launcher, the fact that this is a foreign concept is absurd. We need to stop thinking about games as 'Steam games,' or 'Epic Launcher games,' and start to think of them as MY games. Can you access it when some launcher goes down, or a service is sunsetted? You don't actually own the game you buy from a launcher.

You give up all your info, along with cash to purchase a game, and in the end it's just a lease. It also puts buyers in the worst possible position. This desire to own users drives developers to create their own launchers. Folks like 2K, Rockstar, and Ubisoft want access to all of this stuff that comes from owning the end user.

Steam owns their users, they have e-mails, access to payment info, data about what a users likes, buys, and what their friends do. Developers see launchers as a way to 'own' the end user. Launchers are a fundamental flaw in the distribution of digital games. Why does Rockstar need all that overhead? Do I have to mess around with consciously outwitting marketing attempts and supplying them with fake email addresses? Do I have to have a launcher open for Rockstar AND Steam AND Ubisoft AND Origin AND.? I shouldn't HAVE to go through this entire ordeal just to get one workshop mod. I know I know, I could have found a workaround by grabbing a custom launcher written by white hats (presumably) from GitHub and declining a terms of service each launch or endured red screens and being locked out of gameplay options and blah blah. Let me reiterate: the 2K launcher does absolutely nothing except bad things. I googled and fiddled around with it for about 30 minutes and then just. except make you click PLAY again, take up resources, and trash any and all mods including the console.

I pulled down XCom2 from Steam this afternoon because I really enjoy it and I'm between interesting games at the moment, and apparently 2K decided to throw in their own game launcher overlay.

Monopoly for dos free download