I'm looking at you, ubisoft

~~linux~~ gaming without 3rd party launchers.

Funnily the first time I tried Linux on my desktop was because I wanted to play BF4 but the EA App refused to launch on Windows 10 even after restarting/reinstalling everything.

I slapped Pop_OS on a backup SSD and got it running through Lutris within the hour.

Origin was a fucking nightmare to use even on Windows, and honestly...the EA desktop app wasn't really an improvement.
- Origin was better in literally every way, but it's predecessor, the EA Download Manager, was even better, as it wasn't an always-online DRM piece of shit. You logged in, it listed your games, it downloaded them, and games still used a CD key.
  
  Though I'm still pissy, as I bought NFS Carbon and obtained it via EADM, but when they moved to Origin, existing games didn't transfer, and there was no way to grab games for archival. So EA owes me a fucking copy of Carbon, since I didn't have it installed when they sunset EADM.
  
  Fuck you, EA. In every conceivable sense of the word and action.
Just slap the "Linux" onto any post and immediately get more upvotes on Lemmy.
- Lemme try this
- Also it's a Linux community this was posted to.

and kernel-level anticheat. cant forget that one.

That's a tough one. Clearly, everyone hates both kernel-level anticheat and cheaters. The level of hate depends.
- Cheaters are a solved problem, in my opinion. It used to be that people hosted servers- moderating and managing their own communities. The industry went away from that in pursuit of cosmetics and control. There aren't cheaters on well managed community servers in Valve games, but cheaters run rampant in matchmaking in those same games.

Really? Ubisoft though? If there's any game studio I could do without, it would be Ubi. Because of their practices I haven't bought a game from them in years and years, and honestly it's not even been a challenge to pass them up.

I must confess that I love the Assassins Creed series
- But only up till 4.
- The anno series too is something that is very enjoyable
I actually have a number of games that are Ubisoft that I love. They aren’t super new or anything, but they aren’t flops by my metrics (granted, I bought them used long after launch)

I didn’t know they were when I got them, then the ubiconnect thing comes up and I just don’t do that, and it’s just a game that takes longer to load than it should.

Idk about any super bad practices, maybe PC is different from console stuff? (which is how I play, hence used game market, because I can sell it later if needs must) or is this something that spans console as well? What sort of bad practices?
- I'm talking about the sexual abuse on their staff
There's so much attempted shaming in these comments. People like some of their games and some like them a lot. Even if you don't feel like they're the best, Original and Odyssey still carry the attachment people have for Assassin's Creed and Anno 1800 has no real direct comparable alternatives.

Stop trying to make people feel bad for just wanting to enjoy something they like when they are the victim of these companies trying to make their life harder. The fact that Ubisoft treats their customers like trash isn't something to rub in someone's face, it's too bad that some people's hobbies are locked behind something like that.
- Nothing I said was an attempt to make people feel bad. I'm rubbishing Ubisoft's games and practices: expressing an opinion. If that makes you feel bad then I suggest you look inward.
- The fact that other people dont like Ubisoft's trash games shouldn't trigger you so much

i think you might be misunderstanding what '3rd party' means. if ubisoft is making you use an ubisoft launcher to run ubisoft games, that'd be first party. here's an article detailing what the terms mean with regards to game developers. a third party launcher would be like when you add a non-steam game to steam.

~~Third party~~ proprietary game launchers.
- so like steam?
Mandatory first party launchers?
I dunno, I tend to think of the useless thing that comes up for a game I bought on Steam and run through Steam to be "third party"... Maybe that's a stretch, but whatever, it's just unwanted and unnecessary at that point
- Steam is a launcher.

Can't play one of my favorite MMOs on Linux because it now strictly requires the launcher that doesn't work.

The game works! Before transitioning to a new launcher and strict laucher-only startup, it was fine. But now...yeah.

No way to extract what the launcher does and use it as launch options in whatever youre using to launch the game?
- Didn't find a way
If you're talking about runescape, I've been using the fan made Bolt Launcher and it works great
- Nah, Revelation Online. Requires VK Games launcher to start. But I'll see if your method works somehow, thanks!
Which MMO?
- Revelation Online

What about Steam? Linux gaming would be a whole lot worse off without Proton

I could make another meme "Linux Gaming without Valve and Steam", but it would have another picture on it...

It's my observation that Valve has earned the trust of the linux gaming community and therefore is the one and only acceptable proprietary launcher.
- and therefore is the one and only acceptable proprietary launcher.
  
  Yep! But that's only until they decide to enshitify, which they (Valve) will, because they (the humans making the correct choices today) will sell or retire.
- Now, if proton could be used outside if steam...
Steam is the first party launcher as far as most of us are concerned. When another company puts their game on Steam but makes it go through their own launcher first, that is third party in our perspective and is a source of a lot of games not working.
Steam is fine in my book. And I understand why it isn't open source with how much it's worth.
Steam has an effective monopoly on open, marketplace-style launchers. EGS is their only real competitor and everyone hates it. GOG is years behind the curve and Amazon's launcher barely exists. At this point in time, Steam is hardly considered third-party since it's so ubiquitous.
Some people hate it, including some independent developers. I wouldn't mind going without it, if there was a Free Software library management alternative. I want something to track what I have installed (because I've "lost" things and reinstalled them before) and something that has a decent uninstall.

I also get some benefit from the store integration, but I can understand developers being annoyed at the 30% "steam tax". I'd gladly purchase using some other method, if I didn't have to sacrifice library functions from previous paragraph.

tbh i'm pretty happy installing everything through Lutris

it works great for gog games and pirated games

It always reminds me that genshin is playable on Linux with proton (at least in 4.2, and I didn't even tested wine). It's just the launcher that doesn't work. They are just so close yet so far

It is fully playable? I play on Linux with HoyoPlay and I have absolutely no issues?
- I haven't booted it up since 4.2 but I do know I didn't had any issues. You just need to start from the game exe instead of the launcher
- There's "an anime game" project to workaround the launcher and anti-cheat. Was fully playable when I used it a few months ago, but I did have to change to Proton GE or something else to fix some graphical glitches.
  
  Also, no guarantee your account won't get banned.

Why do you want to play Ubisoft games?

Sometimes they're fun, sometimes friends play them and you want to join?
Anno1800 is actually fun (bought it before the steam release and don't wanna buy it again)
I really enjoyed origins and odyssey they were flawed but relaxing and fun

Oh no someone has a different opinion of enjoyment of an entertainment product better down vote them! Fucking cringe

honestly just PC gaming in general without 3rd party launchers

Sometimes they make sense for managing mod-sets/different instances (i.e. Stellaris or most famously Minecraft.
- well yeah obviously, 3rd party launchers that are optional to use because they serve a purpose. Forced launchers like uplay and origin are the issue. they serve no purpose and offer a worse experience for the user and are forced on your system. Back in my day when a piece of software came with something else that pops up on your screen and runs in the background bogging down your system and collecting data, we considered that a virus.

The majority of the issues I have with WoW on Linux are because of the battle.net launcher. If they added the game to Steam, I'm sure I wouldn't have any issues.

Oof, wow doesn't work properly? That's sad, out of curiosity, how you name adds ons? Install/download them manually?
- It works, it's just flakey to get battle.net started sometimes.
  
  Add-ons can be managed by either wowup or the curseforge client. I prefer the former since it can install from other sources too.
  
  Weakauras can be updated with both the weakauras companion and wago companion app.
  
  Warcraft logs and raider.io also have Linux clients that can be used.

Arr yarr ahoy and avast!

I hope you are running these games sandboxed and never on bare metal.
- Cracking group reputation yadda yadda.

How to play Ubisoft games without the Ubisoft Launcher:
Step 1) If you're an EU citizen, sign this petition: https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home
If you are not in the EU, you can check if there are any other initiatives for your country here: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
Step 2) (Due to insurmountable pressure, which you definitely did your part in adding to, video games are now forced to have an end-of-life plan.
Step 3) Wait until the game you want to play without the Ubi Launcher hits its end-of-life
Step 4) Do whatever is necessary to get the game playable again, which the newly introduced law guarantees is possible
Step 5) Enjoy your game without the Ubi launcher

For me, the launchers are sometimes the only thing that worked while trying Linux the other day.

If you need help, feel free to ask here on lemmy. At least my home instance has more linux users than windows users, and there are many who are happy to help.
I don't know what flavor you were using or how skilled you are in linux, but I'm not very skilled with it at all and use PopOS and I've been able to play pretty much everything in my library besides destiny 2 and flight sim x.

i'd be cool with launchers being made illegal. They do nothing anyway.

Bye bye Steam. No more of that easy proton integration.
- F you will be missed. Too bad they dont like, sell games.
...except manage the game's environment, download and install local files and updates, validate those files to make sure they're not compromised, provide an API for service integration in games, manage middleware like Gamescope or Wine...

It would be like banning all loud and annoying freight trucks inside city limits, and then wondering why food doesn't show up in stores anymore.
- steam is already a game launcher bruh.
  
  There are alternative launches like heroic which don't quite do the same thing, but even then you could still easily validate the game files without a launcher, they have the technology to do that lmao.
  
  GOG is also really popular and literally just gives out .exes, a lot of people really like it.
  
  Also steam is also a games marketplace, you can buy games on it?
But my achievements...!

(I'm serious about this.)
- Can be displayed in-game :3
- a lot of games have integrated achievements. Steam just displays them externally.
The only useful thing launchers ~~can~~ used to do is adjust things like display settings that require reboot. Basically an INI config GUI.

This was more common back in the day probably due to the game engines. More less games require restart in recent years but that could be due to me playing more indie games and less AAA titles.

Edit: wow. Downvote much.
- those launchers i'm ok with, because they don't ask me to log in, or take twelve minutes to start up, or try to promote a game, it's literally just a pre launch menu. That's chill.

Wouldn't that be first party launchers?

Piracy ர

Cracks.

3 ubisoft games i tried to play all have diferent ubisoft launchers. (Watchdogs was free, and trackmania i still like to hunt)

Well, not exactly to be honest. You'll still have a lot more problems than gaming on Windows due to fragmentation.

But, if your distribution system is purely flatpak, then yes, it should be smooth.

You're right. It's just frustrating that most games could run better (or at all) if publishers paid just a little bit of attention.

Ubisoft Connect is supposed to update itself when first launched. Which games specifically are you referring to with broken versions?

What's wrong with GOG?

GOG Launcher doesn't support Linux. I guess.
- True, only through heroic. It has been among the most wished features of GOG, yet never fulfilled.
- It works fine under Linux. I use bottles