Take-Two Interactive has unpublished the 2K Launcher.
In an updated entry on the official 2K Support website, they have updated the page with this announcement:
“As of November 18, 2024, the 2K Launcher has been removed from every game that used it on Epic and Steam. Additionally, we also removed the “2K Launcher Beta”, a completely separate launcher, from Sid Meier’s Civilization V.
On November 25, a follow-up update was sent out via Steam to make sure the 2K Launcher was fully removed. You may notice the 2KLauncher folder was replaced with a text file called 2kLauncherRemoved.txt. This file isn’t needed, and you can safely delete it!”
The 2K Launcher was more than a niggling inconvenience for players. Marvel’s Midnight Suns and XCOM 2 actually perform less efficiently because of the 2K Launcher.
We generally have an idea why companies like Take-Two Interactive, and more recently, Sony, add their own launchers for their games, even games that were published on other storefronts like Steam and Epic Game Store. Sony was caught using their PC client for data collection of their players.
But subsequently, running a game client is not always a bad thing. Steam, of course, is itself a game client, that can also function as a storefront.
But Steam is the ideal of what a PC client should be: it should make it easy for you to find your games to play them, and to manage your game library, and even let you enhance and personalize your experience.
The 2K Games support page had an answer for players who wanted to have a client. While we’re sure most gamers would have laughed at this idea, that’s only because 2K failed to make the client as good as Steam is.
So, this decision is clearly an acknowledgment that 2K Games failed to make a good client. They will have to work with Steam and Epic to push future updates and changes for their games moving forward.
On the flip side, this decision also means that many things that were hampered or disabled because of the client are now back. That includes better Linux support, which means these games should have better compatibility with the Steam Deck.
This also means XCOM 2 and games like it should now be easier to run with mods, the way it was before that client launched. We will defer to 2K support for the finer details for this change.
Hopefully, this means good things for 2K’s future games, which would include their annual sports games, and also Mafia: The Old Country, which is coming next year.
