I don’t. Launching things is my desktop environment’s job.

Since the rise of game publishers’ launchers, I have to use my (desktop) launcher to launch a (storefront’s) launcher to launch a (publisher’s) launcher to launch the game. It’s probably the best example of the yo dawg meme I have ever seen. In other words, ridiculously annoying, not to mention wasteful of my time and system resources.

I resent the accusation that I need a launcher. I don’t.

90’s kid myself so I probably don’t fit into the old gamer category, but my grievance with launchers is the same with most UI systems: I must figure out how the author expected it to be used, and if there’s something that bothers me, finding ways to circumvent or solve it is a quest.

At least with terminal-based tools, or very basic lanunchers, I can find far more easily ways to make launching games ideal, even by bridging to a program or the system’s UI.

We don’t, really. I certainly grew up without them. It did both good and bad things. It did centralize and simplify some things, but that came at a cost of freedom for more power users. It was great for sorting out dependencies at a time games were still often bad at doing that cleanly on their own for less-technical people. I think it did good things for community, though, particularly for those of us who did not use any modern consoles that had various party/SNS-like features baked in.

I’m not a fan of Steam or any launcher really but they have some useful features like friends lists and multiplayer updates. I don’t miss the times of downloading individual patches and having to insert a disc but nowadays has its own problems like “online” requirements for singleplayer and being forced to update. Thankfully GOG exists and some devs still offer DRM free versions and that’s my priority now.

1. Games get updates far more often than they did back in the 90s and 00s. If your game is installed, it’s pushed to you automatically. If it’s not installed, the next time you install it, you’ll be on the latest version.
2. Installing a game is passive compared to inserting the next disc, fishing out the serial key, etc. You just click download and walk away for 5 minutes. Likewise, as games are very large these days, you can easily uninstall and reinstall games on limited drive space very easily from the same UI.
3. Cloud saves. They’re always nice to have. You can rig up something like it if you’ve got the networking and scripting know-how, but once again, it’s just passive through a launcher like Steam.
4. There’s a lot to be said about the longevity of network multiplayer games that allow you to self host and port forward, but Steam and its ilk mean that the average person never has to learn how to do that ever, and it’s more secure for the end users for Steam to take on the burden of facilitating the connection.
5. With things like Steam’s Big Picture Mode, you can navigate an entire library and jump from game to game with nothing but a controller.
6. Launching a game via Proton, whether in Heroic Games Launcher, Lutris, or Steam, is just easier and more automatic than not using a launcher.

All that said, there’s a lot of value to GOG for never requiring the launcher (but they make an annoying exception for network multiplayer games).

Having one launcher isn’t a problem for me. Steam’s OS’s launcher even allows me to launch GOG games through Heroic without even really launching Heroic.

Where it starts being a problem is when individual games need their own launcher…

I see the launcher as the system menu in a console…

Ease of use, manages updates and just keeps it all together.

My first PC games you had to exit windows and load the game thru DOS, it meant we learned how computers actually worked, but it was a hassle.

All the talk of games ownership and preservation overlooks the fact that I can play my first steam game today, while so many of my disks have been lost to time.

And let’s not forget how much bullshit came with those disks. DRM schemes up to and including root-kits. Serial # and activation codes. And don’t forget, though you had physical media, what you actually owned was a licence.

I’m a steam and gog fan.

I use steam for the ability to plug in any controller I want and instantly be able to use it. I can download controller maps from the community on the fly.
I can stream straight to my TV and play in any room with a TV in it with zero effort. I can join my friends games with two clicks. Remote play allows you to play games you don’t even own with your friends. Works on linux. Integrated workshop. Easy modding.

I use gog for older games not on steam. Works on linux. (Heroic at least)

I could go on with steam, but those are the key points stands alone games don’t offer.

I played PC games since the early 90s, so I am well familiar with how things used to be before steam. And it was fine. I was hesitant to use steam at first, because like you say, I simply didn’t understand the point of it. Sometime after Valve released the orange box, that ended up being the first thing I bought on steam. And back then, some of the first things that I noticed about it was the ease of installing games, and the friends list that let me talk to and play games with my friends. I ended up getting really into team fortress 2, largely because I could play with people I knew, and we could even chat outside the game easily. It was easy to buy other games that these same friends were playing, and then enjoy a different game with them.

I got used to steam and it began to feel convenient, and at the same time, physical media started dying off. Steam let me easily install and uninstall any of my games whenever I wanted. I didn’t have to keep track of any physical media. I don’t have any of my old PC games from the 90s anymore. I have no idea where there went or how I lost them. But they are just gone. However, I still have every game I’ve ever bought on steam.

I’m not a heavy gamer anymore. If I see something I want, it’s easy to just put it on my wishlist and wait until it goes on sale at a price I think is reasonable. If I feel bored, I might open up my full list of games and browse for something to install. My game saves get backed up to the cloud. My controllers just work. Everything related to the gaming experience is integrated into one place, and I like that, it makes it easy. And for the most part, steam kind of just stays out of my way.

Out of all the features Steam offers, the most useful is probably just automatic updates. Much better than having to go check for an update myself and maybe even redownload the whole game every time instead of just the changes.

Also Steam Workshop, multiplayer (if it goes through Steamworks), controller fixes, screenshot and recording functions, chat, forums, etc.

Depending on how you make the game some launchers can make sense. You can set display options before launching the game. Back in ye olden times some games would launch by default in a set resolution which often made changing that in-game difficult as it would be off screen. Also makes your first time launching it a better experience than some low-res garbage. Also, without a platform like steam they can handle updates.

That being said, I don’t think most modern games need those functions. Graphics engines are pretty good at getting screen resolution from your os (not perfect). And platforms handle patches and updates.

Now they’re mostly there to gather metrics and shove ads in your face, and enforce drm.

It can be convenient. You’re going to launch the games somehow, whether that’s clicking files in a folder or running a command. If you have a bunch of games it’s nice to see them neatly organized in one place with nice visual representation. Non-launcher options tend to either get unwieldy or require more customization work.

The Steam launcher does a whole bunch of other useful things, like managing saves, setting up Proton, tracking play time and achievements, connecting to friends, integrating the store. It’s not hard to see why people like the convenience.

It is annoying when it goes too far… like individual games that insist on having their own launcher.

Heroic is a nice middle ground. GoG gives you simple downloads, that you can then choose to access through Heroic.

Updating all of my games is a huge boost. I also enjoy the sync feature as I may play the same game on my desktop, HTPC, and Steam Deck. I like GOG allowing installing without their launcher, but I still just install games through Heroic Games Launcher for the same reasons as above.