Bethesda returns to Steam and ditches its own launcher

Like many publishers, Bethesda introduced its own launcher a few years ago, much to the dismay of many players. That’s enough of that. Because on the PC you give this up and the content and save games are largely transferred to Steam. EA Origin, Ubisoft Connect, Rockstar Launcher, and whatever they are called: it has been common for years for individual publishers to cook, or rather to cook, their own distribution soup.

Since most PC gamers themselves prefer to have the games centrally on Steam, they don’t care whether Valve gets a 30 percent stake or not. Bethesda introduced its launcher in 2016, but how? pc gamers write this was more of a “nice interface for buying Bethesda’s games than a way to manage them.” In other words, it offered no real added value. Now the company, which is now owned by Microsoft, has announced that it is giving up the launcher.

Steam transfer from early April

“You can migrate your games and wallet to your Steam account from early April,” Bethesda wrote in one blog post and promises that gamers won’t lose anything at the moment on the Bethesda.net Launcher. That includes the scores. Most are transferred automatically, some require manual intervention. The game provider plans to provide more details on how the migration will take place at a later date. The Bethesda.net account will continue to exist, but in the future, you will only be able to log in via the website and the in-game interface.

Bethesda also has a separate FAQ that explicitly emphasizes that Fallout 76 players don’t have to worry about losing anything: “We take every precaution to make sure your Fallout 76 characters, buffs, atoms, seasonal improvements, cosmetics, rewards, your friend’s list, and even the perfect cakes, which you have hoarded, take this journey with you.” The background to this decision is certainly that many Bethesda players will now be able to access the games through Xbox Game Pass. It should therefore hardly be worth it for Microsoft to use a separate launcher.