Many gamers are notoriously averse to being forced into installing “yet another” proprietary launcher on their systems.
Owlcat Games recently emerged as the latest studio planning to join the ranks of developers who have launched their own dedicated software hubs.
While interacting with the community, the developers shed light on the rationale behind this move. They noted a surprising trend where their newest releases often fly under the radar, even for those who have spent hundreds of hours in the studio’s previous titles:
[…] survey data revealed a surprisingly large segment of the Pathfinder 2 audience who, despite wanting to play “similar CRPGs,” had never actually heard of Rogue Trader. While this isn’t entirely shocking in an age of information overload where news is easily missed, it highlighted an increasing need for a dedicated cross-promotion tool for our games.
Consequently, the studio conceived the idea for a launcher that would serve as a central hub for game updates and announcements. Beta testing is scheduled to begin in late January 2026.
The prospect of “launcher bloat” has already sparked frustration among some PC gamers. One particularly disgruntled player threatened to demand a full refund if they were forced to interact with what they described as a “cursed piece of junk.”
To ease these concerns, Owlcat Games clarified that the launcher will be entirely optional:
If you have no interest in using the launcher’s features or viewing our updates, you can simply run the game directly via the executable file or select the bypass option in Steam. The game will continue to function perfectly without the launcher.
Source: iXBT.games