The launcher was there to make it easier to pull the latest build without needing to check if a new version was available. A couple of years back the updates were irregular (sometimes a few days, other more than a week). We regularized the new builds once a week, but, still, the launcher now serves as a way to explore different unofficial or experimental servers that are being available (via registering in the GitLab project).
Most launchers I see aren't necessary for any technical reason. Most don't even bother to enable any functionality at all to the end user's benefit. They're instead used to exert some form of control in a way that's usually palatable enough to not cause a huge PR backlash. As a default stance, being anti-launcher as an end user seems reasonable.
To me launchers are / can be another pattern of dark-ui. Why is a launcher required?
Is the launcher spying on my system, sending information back to HQ?
Can't you tell me the game needs updating when I play the game and then update the game in-game?
Are you going to throw me advertisement banners when you're not making or being greedy?
What if the update fails?
It's one thing I have to wait upon to play the game but launchers come bloated. A carousel of graphics taking a gig of space then requiring an additional 10GB download for the actual game.
Because Veloren's update cadence for most servers is substantially more frequent than most package repositories are willing to handle (trust us, we've tried!). You can install the game without the launcher, but don't expect it to be compatible with most servers.
> Is the launcher spying on my system, sending information back to HQ?
> Can't you tell me the game needs updating when I play the game and then update the game in-game?
That's exactly what the launcher is doing.
> Are you going to throw me advertisement banners when you're not making or being greedy?
Categorically, no. Veloren is open-source (GPL 3), and developed by a close-knit and dedicated community of volunteers. It's a hobby project and will always be free-as-in-liberty as well as free-as-in-beer.
> What if the update fails?
I'm not sure why it would (bar an iffy connection), but the launcher works in offline mode just fine too.
> but launchers come bloated.
Ours doesn't.
> then requiring an additional 10GB download for the actual game
I think we're up at a few hundred MB right now. Most of that is music. It's worth it :)
Yes, just that server and client are very much tied, and we have a release cadence of one new version per week. So, you would need to track the release of each week and compile it, to be able to connect to the official server.
> Is the launcher spying on my system, sending information back to HQ?
The game and the launcher is published by the same people. If they wanted to spy on you, there's no reason not to do that in the game as well.
> Can't you tell me the game needs updating when I play the game and then update the game in-game?
While not impossible, this is way more difficult to do safely and reliably in-game. There's a reason most updaters live outside of the main app process.
> What if the update fails?
Then it's a lot easier to recover from this in a separate, dedicated, minimal app, than as part of the game itself.
Launchers have their place. For example Minecraft needs a launcher: different servers run on different versions (because of heavy customization that doesn't instantly update on a new game release), so being able to select an arbitrary version and launching it is essential. And the snapshot/beta channel works best if you make it easy for people to play the current, stable version, then quickly check out the latest release, then switch back to stable.
Many early-access games do the same via Steam's "beta" feature. If you don't use Steam, you have to replicate the same in a launcher. Or you do it like Adobe and have an entire separate "not a launcher" program to manage which versions are installed.
Verloren currently doesn't seem to actually offer much version management in the launcher, but it seems like a likely future requirement.
It's not clear to me how these are dark. You aren't being tricked, and all of these traits might be in the game client itself as well (game could phone home, auto update, fail to auto update, be slow, etc)
But I expect to play the game, when clicking the game icon. Not being thrown in to a launcher waiting for me while I then thrown advertisements for their next game.
Take a look at EA Origin, it's horrific. It updates then the whole launcher implodes with some alien error code like as one of a printer.
> Can't you tell me the game needs updating when I play the game and then update the game in-game?
Can you explain this a little? Do you have any examples? Unless you're installing a completely new copy of the game, you're not going to be able to play while you update, making this look an awful lot like a launcher. I'm not aware of any games that are hot-updatable.
Q3 was from times without trivially available persistent internet connections. You had to hunt down the patches and mods yourself manually, hoping not to get malware instead. It was a different time. The updates also were much more spread out - last 3 were from 2001, 2002, 2006.
It's just not comparable to how things work today.
