When people open up their Steam (or Epic, or GOG) libraries and press play on a game, rarely are they happy to see a secondary launcher pop up, asking them if they're really sure they want to play, or if they'd rather look at some random updates and change their settings. Thus, while the idea of an Owlcat Launcher sounds good on paper, the backlash has been immediate and fairly understandable from a player perspective.
As outlined in a new post on Steam, Owlcat wants its launcher to be as unobtrusive as possible. It doesn't steal any of your data, it doesn't require mandatory registration, and it has plenty of options for you to change how it works. You can even turn it off, if you like. Still, the mere existence of a menu which acts as a way to hear more about Owlcat's latest and greatest is enough to cause a number of negative reviews on Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader's Steam page, as well as a good deal of backlash on Reddit.
Why did Owlcat make a launcher? Well, it's a pretty logical step, if you think about it. The company's research showed that a lot of players looking for similar games to its current successes in Rogue Trader and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous didn't know about the other title. With the studio working on Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, and publishing Shadow of the Road, a central hub for everything Owlcat doesn't sound like a bad idea. But, players aren't too stoked about the idea of another launcher added to the slew of pre-existing launchers out there, and what's more the launcher appears to take up some performance space.
Owlcat has been quick about listening and adapting to feedback, and in a new post on Steam has outlined that the launcher has been rolled back. "Lord Captains, we hear you and we are rolling back the launcher. The game will now revert to the previous patch, completely removing any Launcher-related changes. Thank you for your feedback, and genuinely sorry for the frustration caused," reads the post.
The feedback was pretty brutal, but it seems that Owlcat has taken it as a sign that the launcher, at least how it was implemented yesterday, didn't quite hit the mark. That's not to say the idea was necessarily a bad one, but perhaps it just wasn't implemented the right way.