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Just went home for lunch, intending to play a little (it's been a stressful morning) and was greeted to a new update which forces a proprietary NEW Game launcher system on the player, even if you have the game for steam. Needless to say, feth that. Game uninstalled, and will not be supporting any future Rockstar games. We really need to vote with our wallets guys, these companies are out of control with this nonsense.

Wait what's wrong with a game launcher?

Please elaborate because I use multiple games that have launchers and all they are is a simple window that opens up, normally networked so that it picks out the other titles from that developer to play with. All the current Total War games use a launcher, Paradox games use one too as do Slytherine. I'm sure there's a few others that I've forgotten also using launchers.

So please what's the issue?

 Overread wrote:
Wait what's wrong with a game launcher?

Please elaborate because I use multiple games that have launchers and all they are is a simple window that opens up, normally networked so that it picks out the other titles from that developer to play with. All the current Total War games use a launcher, Paradox games use one too as do Slytherine. I'm sure there's a few others that I've forgotten also using launchers.

So please what's the issue?

Maybee he is concerned over intrusion of yet another launcher?

its a prelude to removing music they cant be bothered to renew the license for, despite having 11ty ten bajallion dollarpounds I tell ya !

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
its a prelude to removing music they cant be bothered to renew the license for, despite having 11ty ten bajallion dollarpounds I tell ya !

Why should that occur? If you bought the game while any 3rd party licensed content is valid the end user gets to enjoy the content after contract expiry..

 Orlanth wrote:

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
its a prelude to removing music they cant be bothered to renew the license for, despite having 11ty ten bajallion dollarpounds I tell ya !

Why should that occur? If you bought the game while any 3rd party licensed content is valid the end user gets to enjoy the content after contract expiry..

Depends on the game. For an offline game sure; however for a game distributed through steam there's a high chance that if the music licences expire then the developers might pull that content otherwise they'd have to run two versions of the game.
One version with the music for existing customers and one version for new customers (since they could no longer legally sell the music any more). This could be a headache for them if they are still releasing patches and supporting the game. Therefore they might take the view of creating one single exe and supporting that, eve nthough it might mean all existing customers have to lose music when the licence ends.

There might be other options for them to consider which might allow existing customers to retain the music.

Typically most games that deal with licences are things like movie tie-ins and sporting games - all of which do the same thing when the licence expires - they go fully off sale digitally and the only way to get them is in physical form (or activation codes sold before the game was taken off sale). It's a royal pain made worse because a LOT of companies don't market it very heavily when the deal is geting near the end. So you can suddenly wake up and find the games gone. I know it wasl ike that for me when the Transformers games vanished for sale overnight.

Scott.... Pilgrim.....

 Overread wrote:
Wait what's wrong with a game launcher?

Please elaborate because I use multiple games that have launchers and all they are is a simple window that opens up, normally networked so that it picks out the other titles from that developer to play with. All the current Total War games use a launcher, Paradox games use one too as do Slytherine. I'm sure there's a few others that I've forgotten also using launchers.

So please what's the issue?

A lot of people are saying this launcher has a tone of data tools that take way more user data than is needed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Wait what's wrong with a game launcher?

Please elaborate because I use multiple games that have launchers and all they are is a simple window that opens up, normally networked so that it picks out the other titles from that developer to play with. All the current Total War games use a launcher, Paradox games use one too as do Slytherine. I'm sure there's a few others that I've forgotten also using launchers.

So please what's the issue?

Maybee he is concerned over intrusion of yet another launcher?

This too. I don't want all of this bloat-ware data retrieval crap.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
its a prelude to removing music they cant be bothered to renew the license for, despite having 11ty ten bajallion dollarpounds I tell ya !

This is literally what happened with Panzerlied in Hearts of Iron 4. The original version of the song was super good (and I'm pretty sure was the version used for the film Battle of the Bulge which meant $ was being spent on having it in the game) but one day it mysteriously vanished from the playlists. A few weeks later, the song was brought back, but it was a different version and couldn't hold a candle to the original. To hear the German speaking players talk about the replacement Panzerlied, it sounds like Paradox hired a local (for them) company to record a version that they would own the rights to (the German speaking players complain that the new version sounds like the singers all have Swedish accents, and Paradox is a Swedish company).

I feel ya...

The MO seems to be twofold:

Mine customer data
Ram DLC & other product down their throats.

Why would they want to let steam keep their cut of $$ when they can do it themselves.

Wherever possible I like to buy old vintage games on discs and go full offline. Unfortunately this is pretty muthc a relic of the bygone age where now even if you buy a physical game you still need to download GBs of crap DLC you will not be buying to play your game..

I second voting with the wallet. But that's for everything. The customer has all the power but for some reason everybody feels powerless..

The TW launcher I actually don't mind, because its by far my fav franchise and pretty much the only game I play these days. .

Rant done.