Bethesdais known to the majority of gamers as the publisher behind some of the most famous RPGs in video games such as theFalloutandElder Scrollsseries. While Bethesda works on its latest ambitiousRPG projectStarfield, it is leaving behind one of its other ideas. Announced back in 2016, Bethesda’s game launcher allowed fans to skip the third-party companies like Steam and play Bethesda games straight from Bethesda.net.
Bethesda is giving up on the idea of having its own launcherto compete with the likes of Steam and Epic Games. While those two can offer gamers hundreds if not thousands of titles to choose from, Bethesda’s own games cannot compete with such numbers, leading to the publisher announcing that it would shut down its launcher. While it made the decision in February of this year, Bethesda has only recently set an official date for when fans would no longer be able to access the launcher.
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Bethesda has elaborated on the original blog post that announced the shutdown of its launcher, stating how long players will have to transfer their games, save files, and wallet over to Steam. Bethesda has ensured that gamers won’t lose any progress, as all but one of the games available on the Bethesda launcher can be transferred to Steam. The outlier isaction shooterWolfenstein: Youngblood, which is currently unable to transfer.
Some games will transfer their data automatically over to Steam, while others need the player to manually copy and paste files over. Transferring can be done at any time from April 27 and will even be available after the shutdown officially happens on May 11. Bethesda is encouraging fans to keep their Bethesda.net login details even after the shutdown of the launcher, as games that require the details to be accessed will still have that feature implemented. For games that wereexclusive to the Bethesda launcher likeRage 2, it may be vital for players to hang on to their login information.
While someBethesdafans may be annoyed that they have to transfer their saves to a new launcher, for many gamers one less launcher to download is a positive thing. With so many PC launchers now being needed to play games, the removal of one helps to streamline the process of PC gaming. Now players won’t have to download Bethesda’s own launcher for upcoming games likeStarfieldandThe Elder Scrolls 6.
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