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 usually makes it easier to centralize authentication. But more importantly (from the company’s perspective), it gives the game producer a chance to upsell other products and micro-transaction content.
Minecraft is special. The launcher sets up a bunch of Java stuff and other game configurations. And it downloads updates and handles authentication. Technically you don’t need it, but it makes it a little easier for the developers and the users. There are also third party launchers with additional functionality like downloading mods.
Other games often pretend they need that stuff when in reality they just want some more tracking that is not in the game itself.
Technically you don’t need it, but it makes it a little easier for the developers and the users.
For that matter, if you poke around in some games’ files, you can find the actual game.exe and launch it directly from there, bypassing the launcher. You just bypass the authentication and compatibility checking as well.
That, my friends, is also how you play games from the epic store. And how to bypass steam as well.
Doesn’t work with every game, though. Some have DRM that depends on the launcher and/or authentication.
Managing updates, versions, mods, and settings can be done from a launcher instead of the game itself and it’s often easier that way. If you wanted to adjust mods in-game you’d need to restart the game for changes to take effect.
Before Steam became the universal launcher, lots of games had their own. Minecraft isn’t a Steam game so it comes with its own launcher.
If you wanted to adjust mods in-game you’d need to restart the game for changes to take effect
This completely depends on the game. There’s nothing inherently about mods that requires this.
The only game I can think of that doesn’t actually require a restart is Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries. I’m sure there’s more, but that’s what I’ve encountered.
Luanti is kind of the obvious example to point to, with it being a community-developed engine for Minecraft-like games. But yeah, what @Azzu@lemm.ee said very much makes the difference. As opposed to Minecraft, Luanti has modding support built-in.
To answer your third question about Minecraft specifically, you absolutely can run the Java version of Minecraft independently of the launcher. It’s just a Java package. Find it and load it with your Java runtime from the command line and it’ll play. Without authentication from the launcher, however, you will not be able to connect to Realms or indeed any multiplayer servers that have authentication enabled.
But for that reason, the Java version specifically of Minecraft is famously easy to pirate, provided you are fine with being limited to only playing locally or on pirate servers that have authentication disabled.
In the bad old days this was in fact the only way to play Minecraft in non-supported platforms (i.e. not Windows).
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.
Ah yes, if you’ve ever had the problem of a game’s graphics not working properly but you can’t adjust the graphics because it requires you to launch the actual game and navigate the settings menu you will appreciate that. Most games store and read their settings in an external file and a launcher can provide a meaningful way to edit those. That being said there’s many launchers who actually don’t offer this feature and are just used to shove ads your way or track your behavior.
