We just beat a PC gaming villain: 2K removes its pointless, game-breaking launcher from its entire catalogue

Remember the 2K Launcher, the completely pointless bit of bloatware that got crammed into games like BioShock Remastered, Civ 6, Mafia, and XCOM 2? The one that straight-up broke certain games for some users and dinged performance in others? It's dead. Gone. Donezo. Never, god willing, to return.

2K announced the "complete sunset" of its extraneous launcher in a blog post yesterday, although it actually kicked in a few days prior. "As of November 18, 2024, the 2K Launcher has been removed from every game that used it on Epic and Steam," went the announcement, and "On November 25, a follow-up update was sent out via Steam to make sure the 2K Launcher was fully removed." 2K also says it has removed the "2K Launcher beta," a new and improved version of that garbage, from Civ 5.

In other words, the evil is defeated. Oh, fine, not evil, but I along with many others have been thoroughly annoyed by the prevalence of launcher bloat over the past few years. I have never, not once, not ever been happy to see another bit of software pop up when I try to launch a game from Steam, whether it's Uplay or Origin. Sorry, I mean Ubisoft Connect or the EA App.

I dream of a world in which every launcher only launches games, rather than other launchers, but doing away with 2K's thing is a decent start. There are some complications for certain now-launcherless 2K games, mind you. XCOM 2 was one of very few games to attach some functionality to the 2K Launcher—it handled mod support—so launching that game from Steam will now present you with options to launch either the "original" or "new" mod launchers—though you can also just launch the game directly if you're modless.

You can get a breakdown of the difference between the mod launchers here, but long story short: the original mod launcher will warn you about incompatible mods but still let you play them while the new one won't. XCOM: Chimera Squad has a similar thing going on, but it only has the one mod launcher option. As a bonus, all these mod launchers work on the Steam Deck, says 2K.

So hey, props to 2K for realising everyone hated its launcher and doing the right thing. It might have been better not to launch it at all, but life is a learning process. I did laugh at one of the removal announcements beginning with the phrase "All things must come to an end... and that includes our 2K Launcher." Pretty sure that saying is usually 'all good things,' but I suppose 2K couldn't quite bring itself to say it.