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.
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.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.