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Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

Kill all the launchers. Ubisoft, Rockstar, Bethesda (RIP), Epic. I really hate these mediocre "me too" wannabe social network / launchers.

I'm actually surprised this hasn't been rolled into the Xbox launcher, which still exists right (on PC)?

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Thank you. I already have a "launcher" for my programs. It's called my computer's operating system. I don't understand why I should need to run a program just to have it run another program.

So you can conveniently buy, download and update certain programs.

Those could be a package manager and a web page.

Microsoft did this to themselves by not having a standard package manager installed by default.

The Microsoft Store on Windows exists. They just aren't going to start letting you download full games without paying, so the Store still ends up mediating licensing, which publishers aren't too keen on.

But the Microsoft Store is pretty bad; ie. I still cannot install games to my second ntfs hard drive due to some weird error, so I don't use it.

Have any of you used steam?

So how are you going to buy games if you've killed all the launchers. No Steam, no Epic, no GOG Galaxy. Are you going to download everything over http from your browser?

They can exist for purchasing and managing the games. But it's ridiculous that if you log in to Steam and launch a game from there, you're then prompted to register and log in in some other crappy needy launcher that provides absolutely no value to the user.

Technically, GOG lets you download installers via https, but I agree that it's a pain point vs a game launcher where you can, with minimal effort, queue up multiple downloads/ installs.

I think in an ideal world the program you run to download and launch the games and the service selling and providing those games would be entirely separate.

The same way you installed that launcher: by downloading it and running it.

For the record, I have no issue with Steam's launcher because it basically works (although it gets slammed on big releases, which is an issue) and it doesn't force you into a nonexistent social network.

They do it because Steam's 30% cut is ludicrous.

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