Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Get rid of the launcher, PLEASE

The launcher serves no purpose, it is just annoying and I hate it with a passion.

It even prevents proper operation of NVIDIA Gamestream, because instead of just clicking on "start my game" one has to jump through another stupid, nonsensical hoop.

And: not even starting the .exe file prevents this c***ware from starting.

Last hotfix:

Its not exactly what you wanted i know ...
But its closest you get so far ... just mentioning if you missed that.

Wow, thank you!

Is there also an option to launch DX11 directly from Steam?

Edit: uses the last option that was selected apparently. I get HDR when launching the game this way (just tried it out) and this means that it is DX11.

Happy to help.
The launcher will still open tho, just so you know ... game will anyway load without you need to interact with it.

Just run one of the executables in \Baldurs Gate 3\bin......

Still opens the launcher as soon as Steam is running. It's not that easy.

Yeah, I'm in team "fuck the launcher" as well.
And BG3 isn't even the only offender. It's becoming an obnoxiously widespread trend among publishers and at time even single developers.

Look, I already made my choice of what "launcher" I was the most comfortable with when I picked the store where I bought something. I do not want redundant bloatware and that's exactly what a "launcher inside the launcher" is.


it's also worth noting that doing so just to avoid the Larian launcher basically forces you out of a multitude of Steam integrated features that someone may want to use (maybe even multiplayer support? But I didn't test it).

I'm not a fan of launcher too.

If I clicked "launch" a game on steam (or gog, or origin, or uplay, or epic game, or...) or on a desktop icon, it's to play this game and not another one of the same studio...

I don't understand why a lot of them are doing this now...

The only thing I can think of that's included in that launcher is the direct feedback link, but it would be way better and probably more useful/user friendly if that feedback link was available from the in-game menus rather than from the initial Larian launcher. Ideally with a savestate or screencap attachment option there too, because I think I'd be much more likely to use it that way, rather than closing the game to get back to the launcher.

I might feel slightly differently about it if the Launcher felt somehow more D&D themed, or even exclusively BG3 themed, rather than Larian/Divinity themed with BG3 added on top of it. I honeslty don't know what that would look like exactly, but say if the launcher provided a bunch of stuff specifically related to the BG3 Early Access experience. Character-savegame export/import or player matching specifically geared for MP. Some kind of native modding functionality perhaps. Integrating BG3 with online D&D5e source materials. Or if it somehow made loading the game faster rather slower, with that classic BG "level up" sound effect hehe.

But as it stands the Launcher just seems like purely a marketing thing, that does next to nothing for me as an end user. I don't really care much about the merch, or job opportunities in cities a thousand miles away, or really want to be reminded of DOS2 every time I launch BG3. I miss the days of feeling like I actually owned a game, rather than just leasing it, which is what separate launchers make me think of for some reason.

Anyhow, yeah, I could make do without it and wouldn't miss it if it suddenly disappeared overnight.

The launcher is a minor nuisance, but it does give you the possibility to swap between Vulkan and DirectX which saved me plenty in patch 5 as I had major issues with Vulkan as the game crashed at the start screen.

That's not something I would have been able to change in-game

That's... Not a perk of the launcher at all?
Plenty of games give you that option without needing one.

In fact the already suggested method of running directly the preferred executable (DX11 or VK) was a way to sidestep the problem.
And there are other workarounds as well.
Hell, the recurring crash at launch was apparently caused BY the launcher itself.

Question from the other side of barricade ...
Since Larian obviously didnt create this launcher to be hidden and forgotten forewer ... could they please add some option for it to "not close when BG-3 is closed" ?

Its especialy tedious with every new patch, when game become especialy unstable ...
Go to steam > start launcher > launch the game ... get crash ... and repeat it whole again. -_-
It would be so much easier, if Launcher (if Larian really insist on its presence) would simply stay open and we could just click on play again and skip this whole proces. :-/

Right. It could even be implemented in such a way that the client doesn't need to be restarted.

When it comes to software engineering having to restart a program after setting change (or restart the PC after installation of something, but thats not the case here) is considered suboptimal anyway.

2 years later im having the same problem. please let geforce now launch the game without any interaction with the launcher, its causing problems for me.

And this dont help?

that works if you launch through steam, but not with geforce now which is a cloudbased gaming thing.

It's actually a huge nuisance. I tried booting up Divinity 2 and it didn't recognize I already owned the game through Steam (even after linking it to Steam) and tried to get me to buy it again lol. F this GD launcher BS.

I have a feeling it's partially for advertising purposes. A lot of people will probably buy DOS & DOS2 after seeing them.

Using it to report bugs is handy too.