You’ll never have to use the 2K Launcher for Steam games again

As part of a growing trend among publishers, 2K Games has removed its launcher from “every game that used it” on Steam and Epic.

2K announced the change on a support page last month, and the launcher was removed on November 18. An update was pushed out on Monday to ensure it’s gone, so if you want to hop into a 2K game on Steam or Epic, you’ll no longer have to deal with the extra step of going through a launcher.

There are a couple of exceptions. Players will still have the option to launch XCOM 2 from a launcher on account of mod support. According to a support page, there will be four ways to get into the game, including two versions of the mod launcher. If players want to hop into Mafia: Definitive Edition Trilogy, they’ll have to disable the launcher first. This change also won’t apply to any of the Grand Theft Auto games, as Rockstar has its own launcher. Civilization VI had its launcher removed on Steam earlier this year, but now the change applies to Epic players.

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Otherwise, you can just boot up a 2K game — Bioshock Remastered, Bioshock 2 Remastered, Bioshock Infinite, The Quarry, and Marvel’s Midnight Suns — and play it immediately. Game saves shouldn’t be affected either, so you can pick up where you left off. All you have to do is restart Steam or Epic to apply the most recent update.

Video game players have often criticized major studios for using launchers for their games. While they can be used for cloud saves, updates, and account syncing, many players find them to be a nuisance, whether they have to wait for an extra step to start a game, have to log into an account to just open the game at all, encounter extra bugs, or run into compatibility issues with devices like the Steam Deck. Launchers can often take up extra PC bandwidth, which poses a problem for players with limited processing power to begin with.

While there hasn’t been a mass exodus of PC launchers just yet, some major publishers are pulling back on the idea. EA announced that Dragon Age: The Veilguard wouldn’t launch through EA Play when it released on Steam, while Ubisoft is now releasing games on Steam day one instead of through the Ubisoft Connect launcher platform.