Sometimes, the quest for seamless gaming experience collides head-on with player expectations. For Owlcat, a studio known for ambitious RPGs, this collision recently took the form of a highly controversial launcher designed for their game Best RPGs Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader.
Introduced yesterday, the new launcher was intended to be a simple hub—a convenient spot for players to gather news and updates before diving into the adventure. The studio aimed for simplicity, boasting that the tool required no mandatory registration and collected no player data, offering users an unobtrusive way to stay informed.
However, what was introduced quickly became a source of immediate friction within the gaming community. Instead of easing the experience, many players found themselves inundated with complaints across the Rogue Trader subreddit and Steam forums. The reaction was swift and vocal: pre-game launchers often fall into the category of bloatware—useless in practice, intrusive by design.
The technical fallout revealed a deeper issue than simple annoyance. While Owlcat assured the community they had taken pains to make the launcher subtle, a crucial flaw emerged: the launcher did not actually disappear when closed. Instead, it merely ran invisibly in the background, creating complications for game tracking and system resources.
This technical discrepancy became the focal point of player frustration. Community members pointed out that if the launcher was running but invisible, it still functioned as a process, inadvertently interfering with how Steam recorded playtime. This led to promises from the studio to address the issue, suggesting they would research ways to resolve the time display problem without leaving behind an unkilled memory-eating process.
Yesterday marked the end of that internal deliberation. After nearly twenty-four hours of community outcry and technical troubleshooting, Owlcat made a decisive choice: they decided to eliminate the source of the contention entirely. The studio announced a rollback, completely removing all Launcher-related changes and reverting the game to its previous state.
The result was a swift resolution, though not without a hefty price for the software. The controversial launcher lived on for approximately nineteen hours before being fully scrapped. It serves as a potent reminder that even in the world of ambitious gaming development, the relationship between a studio and its player base requires careful consideration.
Buy on Amazon
Credit: PC Gamer
