What does the launcher do with regard to the operation of the game that cannot be done within the actual game itself? Is it due to a technical limitation or simply there for the convenience of the players? Are there alternatives to such methods of starting the execution of games?
It’s very annoying to self-update without a separate updater (Especially on Windows).
Another reason would be that it’s good to have some functionality separated, like authentication and mod installation.
Patch management
Other than a handful of games where it does literally nothing but force you to sign in to something (such as Rockstar’s Social Club shit or the Xbox Live for Windows thing from years past) most of the ones I see having a launcher just for the one game are ones that let you adjust settings before starting, choose a renderer version to use (Vulkan, DX11, or DX12, etc), or, like as is with Minecraft, allows you to have a safe modded version kept separate from your vanilla game or to manage saves.
You can also, in most cases, bypass those launchers by just launching the preferred executable in the game’s installation directory.
The one big advantage I see with it is that you can have multiple versions of Minecraft installed at once, and launch whichever you like.
specific games like Minecraft I think it’s nessicary, other games such as call of duty which insists on having one launcher manage all game installs I don’t think is.
Imagine trying to handle all the different minecraft installs from the main screen, you would need to launch Java, load a Minecraft game, load a profile, close the game, open the game with the new profile settings and then hope it launches. This setup is very helpful, but I agree most games it is not helpful at all
