As the title says. I severely dislike having to make accounts for every game publisher that wants to send me advertisements, collect data or whatever.
It's usually an instant dealbreaker for me at this point
Publishers needing their own launcher already puts them on shaky grounds with me.
But I really liked the original BG 1 & 2, so I'm willing to not just refund it immediately and actually ask around first for solutions.
If you're using Steam (or any kind of shortcut I suppose), add --skip-launcher to the launch options. Here's how to do so with Steam:
Thank you for the step-by-step. Steam can be a bit of a maze when you don't fiddle with these things so often. :)
Edit: Apparently it's " --skip-launcher" the extra dash matters XD
In future, drop by the PC Gaming Wiki first - it's a great resource for exactly this kind of question.
The Launcher bit was a helpful add-in by a another kind user. I didn't ask about that specifically, just mentioned that I dislike extra launchers.
My question was far more stupid than that. However, people came through for me regardless. And very fast at that. And for that, I am thankful.
Thank you for the info on this, will be using it going forward.
Not sure if you did this on purpose, or if something else did it as part of editing, but your bulleted steps included an en dash (–) instead of two short dashes (--).
Have had issues in the past with that, generally with WYSIWYG type editors combining your -- into either – or —.
Ugh word does this. I didn't realize until I wrote some documentation for a cli tool I made for a client and I wrote the documentation in word because they are fairly non technical so I wrote in the documentation sample arguments they can copy and paste and shipped it feeling good that it would work flawlessly because I tested the crap out of it. Or so I thought because they immediately hit back with it doesn't work. I spent hours recreating their environment and watching it work no matter what I tried to get it to not work. Then I hopped on a call and had the client step by step show me what they did and they opened the word doc and copied the example commands, changed the arguments to be correct and run it. I followed along on my own machine and then I fucking saw what had happened. Fucking Microsoft Word replaced my " " with “ ” (straight quotes for smart quotes for those who cant see the difference). A quick patch of the cli to properly parse those and things were working again.
Copying out of MS products always seems to leave junk behind. The worst one is the zero-width space (unicode U+200B or hex e2808b) . Sharepoint loves to scatter these all over so any copy from a sharepoint source has to be put in a plain text editor and have a run through with a regex to find any invisible formatting characters.
Does it launch with directx or Vulcan when you do this?
You can also make it launch the Vulkan version with skipping the launcher. Seehttps://gamepretty.com/baldurs-gate-3-how-to-skip-launcher-and-use-desired-graphical-api-vulkan-dx11/
If anyone happens to be playing on Steam Deck (or any Linux desktop), the launch options are slightly different:
DX11 no launcher: --skip-launcher
Vulkan no launcher: bash -c 'exec "${@/bin/bg3.exe}"' -- %command% --skip-launcher
Though for this particular title, the Vulkan one is really crashy on my system rn, which is ironic since the DX11 shaders are converted to Vulkan on Linux.
directx is the default and you must apply another switch to start with vulkan https://gamepretty.com/baldurs-gate-3-how-to-skip-launcher-and-use-desired-graphical-api-vulkan-dx11/
You can start the exe you want directly from the directory, there's one for each renderer: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Baldur%27s_Gate_3#Skip_Larian_launcher_on_startup
Not to sound like a dick, but how does this have so many upvotes? There's a button to skip it and never ask again right there.
It’s lemmy, we hate anything regarding accounts, privacy and the corpos man!!
Yeaaah, also f*ck sync D:< /s
Posted from Sync
Apparently others also found the advice helpful.
yeah thanks for posting this. super helpful to learn i can skip the launcher entirely.
lemmy saw an opportunity to hate on something and started roaming at the mouth
Select the "continue without login" option
I am an idiot. I didn't click to the next page after it suggested I make an account.
I just close down the launcher immediately.
nah, asking the question still gave us the 'skip launcher' instructions, so this is a win!
Thanks for making me feel slightly better about it. ;)
I had the same issue. Feels a bit shady to make people click Get Started anyway, but at least the launcher is skippable entirely.
i didn't see that option anywhere. Gimme a sec, I'll check again
Oh, are we starting the reddit tradition of making no effort at all and just immediately asking the community for help instead?
Great.
I can certainly see we're keeping the reddit-tradition of being an angry little muppet at any given opportunity alive.
Yes, I asked a public forum for help about something I didn't know. And they came through for me, more so than I would have expected.
You can go back to being angry elsewhere now. Shoo...
You could have just... LOOKED. I've got no problem when its a question with more nuance than a google search can answer easily, or if its an opinion based question, but all I ask is people just TRY before making a post somewhere when the answer is so simple.
And you didn't even have to click on my shitty post as it already had (SOLVED) in the title
Because I want you to do better next time.
Oi. You two. Take it easy hey.
It literally says "Skip" right underneath the thing you're complaining about. If you'd taken the time to look at the screen, you'd have seen it itself.
Some people have bad eyesight. Some people have been deeply trained by the modern web to ignore most of what's on the page (most of it being ads or other bullshit). Some people make mistakes.
Have some patience and kindness.
And to those who wont be patient or kind, just know that the next time the self-checkout machine yells at you and the cashier has to come scan their badge and gives you grief, you deserve it. Can't you just use the machine correctly!?!
Before that, there's just a button that says "Get Started!" Right underneath the sentence "Sigh up for a Larian Account." Otherwise the launcher was blank.
I mistook that as being a forced sign-up, as with some many other games nowadays.
Also, I'm not complaining about anything. I was looking for advise as there seldomly are easy, search-engine friendly, solutions to forced sigh-ups.
If you'd taken the time to read through the comments, you might have gleaned the context for yourself. But since you took the time to click on a (SOLVED)-post and then write the same message the guy before did, I felt compelled to spell it all out. Just for you.
That button in the corner saying skip account is really hard, okay?!?
Just hit skip, dumbass
No need for name calling. Everyone gets frustrated and misses things.
Don't gotta be rude. Let's be better than that
Are you blind?
No. Are you just here to be an ass?
Yes
It's the entire reason I have Internet access
You can also go to the installation folder and find the bin folder and create a direct shortcut to bg3_dx11.exe to skip the launcher entirely.
I'll never understand why publishers really need to add a launcher after launcher
I think they probably need you to use their account in order to allow cross-play coop.
Thank you so much. I'll do that.
But do you really wanna miss out on those sweet Twitch drops? /s
Also it's tied to their cross save functionality.
I know people don't like to create accounts, but Larian seems to be doing fine when I created the vault account(for their prior kickstarter redeem etc.) It doesn't work with launcher and I contact support to then know they have a new system so they can link steam/twitch/gog for their game specific feature(cross save and twitch integration). So if you ever want to do a session in the future using the twitch integration, you would have to register account to be able to link and use that. It lets viewer check character build/inventory and quest logs, so you can have like 3 viewer like your buddy playing together while you control the choice, your buddy can vote for decision making or direct their character's combat choice. At worst you can be the only viewer to your stream and just use it as a 2nd screen to have over view of character build or inventory.
example screenshot of twitch integration
Indeed. But I have no intention of linking anything up with Twitch, or any other streaming service for that matter.
I just want the games I buy to launch when I press play. No sign-ups, no extra launchers popping up. Just the game I bought, that's all. :)
OP is concerned about their privacy, rightfully so. Them requiring you to make an online account after you have purchased the game is entirely unjustified. They could already tie information to the account with which you purchased a licence.
Connecting Twitch and whatnot would work against your privacy: even if Larian does not do anything bad, they will share data with these connected accounts.
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