Civilization VI has always been lauded as a great game. The next entry in the long-running legendary series is being revealed soon, on August 20th.
However, in the run-up to this announcement, Firaxis made an unexpected update. The 2K Launcher has always been an annoying aspect of Firaxis titles. It seems as Civilization VII approaches, Firaxis wishes to sunset the launcher from their games.
Sunsetting the 2K Launcher
2K’s Launcher was silently added to Civilization VI in 2021. Almost immediately, fans began to complain about the launcher’s bugs and crashes. Problems with the launcher were so common that 2K Support has a dedicated page for it. In a very moddable game like Civilization VI, having stability issues was extremely problematic. As of the time of writing, Civilization VI’s Workshop on Steam has almost 10,000 mods uploaded.
While it was possible to remove the launcher on Steam, the launcher would return with every new update. Players would be forced to remove it again afterwards. The launcher can be removed on Epic as well, but it is a longer process.
Issues with the 2K Launcher are tied to its presence in the background. The extra load would cause fans to complain about crashes, even on DirectX 12. The decision to sunset this launcher after 3 years of dealing with it has been met with rejoice from fans.
On August 14th, Firaxis announced that they will be removing the launcher from Civilization VI. The announcement was made on the r/Civ subreddit, on the Civ Fanatics forums, and via a weekly Steam post. The change will soon come to the Epic Games Store version of Civilization VI as well. Added to the positive news is the announcement about Civilization VII, which has been confirmed to not use the 2K Launcher at launch.
The announcement was met with universal praise. Players are happy they can enjoy Civilization without having to deal with the predatory launcher in the background.
Other Games On The Way?
Civilization VI wasn’t the only victim of this launcher, of course. Other games published by Take-Two such as Borderlands, the BioShock series, or Mafia: Definitive Edition’s trilogy were also victims of this launcher. Many games in the Firaxis catalog have this issue, in fact. Marvel’s Midnight Suns, XCOM 2, and even 2010’s Civilization V are still tied down to the 2K Launcher.
XCOM 2 is perhaps the most infamous example of this. XCOM 2 is already not the most stable game, with plenty of moving parts under the hood. Modding XCOM has been quite popular, however, especially due to the famous Long War of the Chosen mod that overhauls the experience. However, the 2K Launcher makes it so mods in XCOM 2 don’t even work properly for many.
The 2K Launcher’s exact issue with XCOM 2 is that it causes mods to not load properly. Despite mods having a menu to be enabled or disabled within the 2K Launcher, it still often does not work. Fixing it requires players to load the mods in via the Legacy launcher of the game. Afterwards, they can boot the game normally with their mods loaded. The tutorial for this fix has almost 30,000 views on Steam.
Other games such as Civilization V could use the removal of the 2K Launcher as well. Although Civilization VI has a significant player base on Steam, Civilization V still has a significant chunk of players. At the time of writing, Civilization V has around 14,000 players on Steam. Civilization VI for comparison has 55,000 players. Modders often gravitate to Civilization V more than its sequel, due to having access to the game’s DLL files. Firaxis likely wishes to bridge the two player bases in Civilization VII.
There has been no word from Firaxis or Take-Two yet on the fate of the 2K Launcher in other games. We can only hope that the positive reception to the removal from Civilization VI encourages others to have it removed.
What do you think about the removal of the 2K Launcher? Do you think Firaxis will deliver again with Civilization VII? For the latest on Firaxis, Civilization, and Take-Two, stay tuned with us here at the Lords of Gaming.
