Borderlands and Civilization publisher 2K Games has quietly done something very cool and good: The company has removed the need to use its 2K PC launcher from all of its games, and sunset the software completely.
For many, many years, Steam—Valve’s digital PC store—was the de facto launcher and marketplace for all computer games. But starting around 2019 or so, publishers like EA, 2K, Ubisoft, and Bethesda, all began locking games behind individual (and annoying) launchers. So you’d buy a game on Steam, only to be forced to download and muck around with a separate launcher for that game that would boot up each time you tried to play it via Steam. Some companies just stopped publishing games on Steam completely in an effort to avoid paying Valve a cut of each sale. But more publishers are finally reversing course on all this nonsense, and 2K Games is the latest.
On November 18, 2K Games quietly began sunsetting its PC games launcher and removing it entirely from all of its titles.
With this change, Bioshock Remastered, Bioshock 2 Remastered, Bioshock Infinite, The Quarry, and Marvel’s Midnight Suns will now all launch directly into the game via Steam with no bullshit steps in between. No more updating a launcher or linking accounts or whatever. You hit play on Bioshock in Steam and that’s that.
Some games, like the remastered Mafia Trilogy, will take a bit more work to scrub out the 2K Games launcher. The Borderlands publisher has updated each game’s support page with info on what users will need to do.
Additionally, on November 25 the publisher pushed out an update on Steam that fully removed the 2K Games launcher, replacing the folder that contained all of its files and data on your PC with a single text file named “2kLauncherRemoved.txt.” The publisher says you can safely delete that file, too.
2K has a separate guide for folks wanting to make sure every last bit and bob of the launcher is fully gone from their PCs.
Oh, and for the few of you out there who liked the 2K Games Launcher, well, sorry. The publisher confirmed in a FAQ that it has no plans to continue to support it, but 2K does “appreciate your interest.”
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