Guess who's got a launcher now: Rockstar!

This shouldn't be a huge surprised since Rockstar always had weird login stuff before you could get into their games on Steam (from what I recall for GTAV), but they've branched off into their own storefront with the Rockstar Games Launcher, which launched today with a free copy of GTA: San Andreas. It doesn't look all that different than the Rockstar Social Club thing that they used to have, but I guess they want to have you going to one place from now on:

The Rockstar Games Launcher is a new Windows desktop application that allows you to quickly and easily access your Rockstar Games PC collection in a single place, across both digital and disc-based titles including ones purchased from various other digital stores. You can also use the Launcher to shop for new Rockstar Games PC titles to add to your collection.

I haven't tried downloading this or importing GTAV into it from Steam, nor do I feel really inclined to do so. The biggest question is, of course: when the fuck is RDR2 coming to PC? I'm surprised it wasn't announced by now, so any time between now and next gen probably wouldn't be much of a shock for me. Here's hoping!

I guess the real question is if RDR2 will be a Rockstar Launcher exclusive or RL+EGS

Time has no meaning, but from a quick wiki it looks like GTA5 launched the "next gen" console versions and then the PC a year later. With the imminent console generation I assume they are going to do something similar this time... Which makes launching their launcher now seem kind of stupid.

As someone who bought the Social Club version of GTAV through Humble Bundle in late 2015, the start menu shortcut for the new Rockstar launcher just replaces the GTAV shortcut for it's launcher. And like with games bought the UPlay, Bethesda, and EGS, Steam can launch said games by creating a shortcut, so I can't say that having yet another launcher installed is a pain in the ass just yet, especially if this is leading up to RDR2 releasing on PC sooner rather than later because I'm too bougie to play shooters with controllers these days.

Apparently this version of San Andreas can't be modded, so if you want proper controller support (with button prompts and all) or widescreen fix, you might look elsewhere.

Yo dawg I herd you like launchers so we put a launcher in your launcher so you can game while u game.

They could have at least added controller support to there own game, that would have been positive press for them and I would have downloaded the launcher just for that.

Pray for Desktop.

every game now is going to have a launcher and your desktop will be littered with games just like the 90s! Hell yeah!

Rockstar Social Club was absolute dogshit. I remember not getting GTA IV on my PC to play AT ALL because the launcher just did not work.

According to Ars they are also pulling a Ubi and requiring their launcher to be installed to run their games. So even folk with the Steam version of GTA5 (and presumably other GTAs) are required to install the launcher.

Maybe this IS a sign of imminent RDR2 on PC. You don't do this level of shitty unless you have a carrot to make people forget about it

@bonelessspirit:Wasn't GTA4 also GfWL on PC?

Could you explain me why did they make a launcher?

@gundato: Oh yeah, maybe gfwl was the issue? It's been a while so I don't remember, just that it would not play no matter what I tried.

I guess it's fine, but with all these launchers, it pushes me further into the console camp. Sony must be happy.