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:
- Right-click the game in your library and select Properties.
- Look for the Launch Options field at the bottom of the General tab.
- Add “–skip-launcher” and close the properties window.
- Launch the game as normal.
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.
I wish all these games had skippable launchers, i refuse to touch any game that needs a launcher beyond Steam
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.
I typed them directly into my comment from an Android phone, and it continues to display as two hyphens/minuses for me. Are you it’s not your client trying to be clever?
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.
On my system dx11 crashes right away, so vk it is…
Larian themselves warn that Vulkan should be the least stable of the two options at the moment. That said, I’ve heard tons of conflicting reports, so it may be super dependent on specific hardware.
Ironically, with the final (not the pre-purchase) release it’s the other way around. Vulcan crashes after the airship cinematic… (I’m also 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/
For me it chose direct x so I had to use the launcher. Vulcan is much better for me (just be sure to not use triple buffer for nvidia cards). Just choose skip and check the box that says ‘do not ask again’ and the launcher is less aggravating.
What differences do you see when you use Vulcan? And what’s the deal with triple buffering?
Triple buffering basically means that the GPU can temporarily store frames in three different locations in VRAM. This has implications for smoothness and frame time, so it should in theory always be the best option for v-sync and avoiding tearing.
Vulcan should be more efficient so you should get somewhat better performance, though my understanding is it depends on card (AMD cards are kind of designed for Vulkan, but not so much nvidia cards).
vulkan is more efficient on AMD than directx, as I understand it.
My experience is that the directx reflections and post processing look worse. Triple buffering on was causing screen tears.
When Vulcan worked for me it used less Vram, then dx11 does now on linux.
It looks like the following should work (from one of the links above)
You can start the exe you want directly from the directory, there’s one for each renderer: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Baldur’s_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.
Apparently others also found the advice helpful.
yeah thanks for posting this. super helpful to learn i can skip the launcher entirely.
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.
Sorry dad.
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!?!
Imagine defending not even trying.
Imagine getting peeved about it to such an extent that you’re still arguing it two days later.
Get off your high horse, dumbass.
You’re here too, seems I’m not the only one.
It’s my damn post. What’s your excuse?
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.
Just hit skip, dumbass
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.
At the very least it gives them a way to potentislly contact you with offers. Corporate people probably also think it makes you more likely to get another title from the same publisher, though depending on the launcher I think it’s actually the reverse.
Thank you so much. I’ll do that.
I’ve also seen folks mention adding a
--skip-launcheroption to your launch options to achieve the same
But do you really wanna miss out on those sweet Twitch drops? /s
Also it’s tied to their cross save functionality.
Cross save would be great if we didn’t have to pay again to play on different platforms. Until then, cross-save is a “feature” that looks good on paper but it effectively worthless in practice.
Yeah. It was legit useful for Divinity OS2, as the switch legit couldn’t handle a game where you did everything, picked up PC version from a steam sale and finished the save.
then id first need to make a twitch account
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. :)
Just to let you know, while you are adding to the conversation in some ways, in many ways you are distracting from it. I know you likely have good intentions, but you have pivoted completely away from the original ask and are muddying the waters of the conversation a little with the additional input in the complete opposite direction.
The twitch integration may have nice features but the OP, myself, and likely many others don’t care and just want to play our game in peace without constant studio specific launchers and accounts and etc. Bringing twitch integration up makes now us focus on that as the discussion point rather than the clearly user antagonistic features such as lack of a button to skip creating an account.
I only created this after so many post of “I don’t know why Larian would need to put up a launcher and ask for an account”. It’s to show what it actually do and why they needed it. And of course the user can just go with other higher voted comment thread. I think it is a legit reason and usage to ask you to create account and using the feature they provided, and it’s also totally fine that you don’t. (I didn’t created an account when I was checking back and forth with Larian support about the vault account I used to use for their website. I just skip and play EA as always until like 4~5 days later a guy explained this new account situation. I created account like 1 day before launch since I want to get the twitch drop.)
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. ;)
