Rockstar Games Launcher

Not one to be left behind in the launcher business, Rockstar has gone ahead and developed one of their own, predictably called Rockstar Games Launcher. Released in September 2019, it came along just before the Red Dead Redemption 2 announcement for PC, suggesting that the developer wanted to take advantage of this highly anticipated release to popularize its new launcher.

This idea is backed by the fact that only seven of Rockstar's games are currently supported by the desktop app, RDR 2 included, and it's also pretty light on features. Nevertheless, it works well enough, as much as we hate having to split our games between even more desktop clients.

While it isn't too surprising that a developer as successful as Rockstar would want to have their own launcher, gamers aren't going to be happy about adding another one of these clients to their ever-growing collection. Steam, Origin, Epic, Uplay, Battle.net, the list goes on.

Most of these launchers are at least used for a larger number of games, but Rockstar has a fairly limited selection on offer, and only seven of them are currently supported by the client. While Battle.net may not offer a lot more titles, it's been around well before Steam or Origin were a thing, and it comes with quite a few more features.

No matter what you're expecting, you won't be impressed by what Rockstar Games Launcher brings to the table. You can download and launch your games, buy new titles, manage cloud saves, and that's about it. Social features are already managed by Rockstar Social Club, which is installed alongside the launcher.

The UI layout is oddly reminiscent of Battle.net's, but the interface just looks...empty. You have a collapsible games sidebar on the left, the launch button and game-specific news on the right, and a few buttons on the top-right for switching between the library, store, and the settings menu.

If, for instance, you've bought RDR 2 on Steam or Epic, you can launch them directly from Rockstar's app. But here's the kicker: if you try to run the game from Steam or Epic, they simply open Rockstar Games Launcher and use this client to run the game anyway.

Here's the bottom line: while Rockstar's new launcher works well enough, it is simply unnecessary. It offers nothing new, aside from requiring you to install yet another application just to launch games. It doesn't even support many of the company's own games at the moment, so you'll probably end up installing it only to be able to run RDR 2 or GTA 5, even if you didn't buy them from Rockstar's store in the first place.