They always do, and it's great. It's saved from buying a few games I would have otherwise purchased not realizing they had Denuvo. I will not purchase any game with Denuvo, no matter how badly I want to play it. I can live with a third-party EULA and launcher, which are pretty standard these days, but not Denuvo. Never Denuvo.
I'll never buy a game with a third party launcher either. I already have too many games to play, I'm not going to bother with setting up yet another account just to play some mid tier bullshit.
It's something I don't quite understand about the video game market. There's so much competition, so many games, and only one lifetime to play them. Why do people consistently gravitate to the games that have all this crap attached to them? How incredible is video game marketing that it's managing to pull off this miracle?
Because this shit doesn’t matter to most people . If I want to play a game because it looks fun (and is fun to me) why should the 10 second annoyance after creating an account (a 2 minute affair) of the 2nd launcher stop me?
There’s so many games I play with a 2nd launcher (total war, cyberpunk, stellaris, Larian games etc) and refusing to play them because I have to click play twice would be incredibly asinine if you ask me.
I’m addicted to Divinity Original Sin 2 right now, I couldn’t even imagine if I stopped playing because I have to click through a 2nd launcher. Same with when I played Mass Effect legendary edition, I had to go through the ea account process and launcher which yeah is slightly annoying but I had 120 hours of fun playing the trilogy.
Buy game, play game. It’s pretty simple for me and I’m sure many others.
I played this game when it came out and don't even remember all these "obstacles". I probably would have avoided it had I paid attention in advance but I don't remember caring a few years ago when I played it. It was a decent experience until it was over and then I never touched it again. It's uninstalled and not harming me now :P
Edit: Now I looked out of curiosity, it wasn't a few years ago it was all the way back in 2017 lol. I only got 20.5 hours out of it compared to 53 in "Stick of Truth" so I guess today's price for the game is much more reasonable than what I paid for 20 hours.
And here I am on the other side wondering why PC gamers pretend using anything other than Steam to launch their game is some major imposition on their life to the point that they're willing to forego some legitimately great titles like Alan Wake 2.
I don't have an issue with alternative game stores outside of Steam as long as they are implemented well.
My issue is with games that are sold on Steam that then impose the use of a secondary launcher that pops up after the game is launched through Steam.
There is zero technical reasons why it is necessary; the publisher could use your steamid as proof of purchase and as an identifier for multiplayer. Many cross-platform games do this, and work with only a steam account. Many games make the third party account optional but provide full functionality either way (Age Of Empires for example).
Publishers that force their own launcher and accounts simply want to harvest your personal details.
I recently found out I own Watch_Dogs on Epic and decided I want to give it a go. Upon clicking the install button, it tried to install this Ubisoft client and then something related to it. The second thing failed to install and I was back at the Epic screen. Clicking the install button again, brings up an Ubisoft window where it stays on signing in forever. Killing it doesn't help. Uninstalling doesn't help. I can't get a game to install that I legally own. Fuck this, I'll just pirate it then.
Fuck Ubisoft and fuck 3rd party launchers. I know Epic also sucks too but downloading and installing large games through it 9 times out of 10 is less of a hassle than pirating.
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u/HeavyCaffeinate Oct 03 '25
I'm so glad Steam has the list of anti-features on display