EDIT: I’m in error, as I’m sure people have pointed out in the replies. Read through the pinned post regarding the launcher in General Discussion for Funcom’s information.
I’ll leave the post below unchanged for transparency’s sake. Feel free to call me dumb if you want, I earned it.
I suppose this is specifically addressed to Funcom, or rather to whoever at Funcom is directing the company’s current trajectory.
Today, I and many others have booted up Conan Exiles to find a small update and the imposition of a new launcher. It was somewhat of a surprise, given that, at least to my knowledge, there was no forewarning of such a thing on the horizon. I made sure to read through the change notes for 2.3 and 2.3.1 before starting this, in addition to trying to recall anything from the latest Developer Stream.
The launcher, to its credit, seems to provide ease-of-use improvements with mod management, but I really doubt that was the main intent in including it.
I have to ask then, why? I have to ask that because you decided not to tell us. What, did you just expect that no one would notice and just go about their day as if nothing was different?
I’m sure I don’t need to lecture anyone on it, but communication skills are very important. It helps to cultivate understanding, respect, and trust between the two or more parties involved. When you spring unannounced or undocumented changes on the userbase, you are not exercising those skills in any capacity. And given the negative sentiment towards the influx of game launchers in recent years, it gives the impression that it was a deliberate attempt to avoid negative feedback. Unfortunately for you, that feedback is still on its way, and perhaps even more fervent and volatile now due to your reluctance to tell us.
As I understand it, Conan Exiles is rated as an 18+ game, which means that, despite some people’s behavior in various forums, we should all be adults, able to handle things that we don’t want to hear. Do you trust us to be adults, or are we simply one step above animals, not fit to be told?
For all I know, the inclusion of this launcher could be the foreshadowing for supporting cross-play between Steam and Epic Games users, as I suspect the imposition of Funcom Live Services was also intended for back in June of 2020. But I don’t know that.
Tell us.
For those of you who are wondering, yes you can circumvent the new Funcom Launcher (for now), although the solution is a bit hidden-away. Navigate to:
Steam\steamapps\common\Conan Exiles\ConanSandbox\Binaries\Win64
and make a shortcut for either ConanSandbox.exe or ConanSandbox_BE.exe, depending obviously on whether you need BattlEye or not. NOTE: The ConanSandbox.exe found in the main CE folder will not work.
In addition, I would ask that anyone who comments on this to be as civil as you can. The first step in being respected is to prove that you can offer it in return.