How would you rank game launchers and library managers in 2025?

[pascalizer]

Consider things like Playnite, Launchbox, GOG Galaxy, or Steam, Rockstar Games Launcher, Epic Games Store, etc.

I'd rank the library managers as:
1. Playnite
2. Launchbox
3. GOG Galaxy

Game clients as:
1. Steam
2. Epic Games Store
The rest is a hard to tell thing, i really dislike all of them.

 

[dxchase]

My list from the previous years hasnt changed. Steam is really the only one that has its stuff together (for the most part) to me imo. I dont really use any other launcher unless im gated by the game.

I can tell you which one is the worst though and thats rockstars and ubisoft coming in at a tie.

 

[JCgames]

What ever happened to good ol icons on the desktop. That's really all the management you need. Click and play.

Just put the icon of what ypu want to play on your desk top.

Now that i think about, no distractions that way, i should start using them more and keep the launch closed.

 

[Zloth]

Errr, Steam when the game comes from Steam, GOG when from GOG.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Game stores:
Steam
Gog
Xbox
EA
Ubisoft
Epic

Can't rate the libraries because I don't use one. As far as the store ratings, I see Epic as fully functional and nearly as good as GoG except for one thing: they lie about user ratings. As long as their user ratings are BS, they are last in my ratings.

 

[Frindis]

I see someone's been playing S.T.A.K.E.R. 2

Steam
GoG
Launchbox
Epic Games Launcher

 

[BeardyHat]

1. Steam
5. GoG
∞: Everything else.

GoG is obnoxious because it has a memory leak or something. If it's running and I put my computer to sleep, when I wake it back up, suddenly it's eating all my CPU.

Epic, EA, uPlay, etc all just stink. I use them rarely when I need them, but I'm always annoyed with little things they do. uPlay because it eats save files and functions poorly, EA because EA, Epic because it has lots of little annoying things I hate about it. If I go to my library, it has never cleared the last search term. If I click on an installed game, rather than going to the page for that game, it launches it instead. Same goes for installing games, if click the game because I want to look at the page for it, it instead tries to install.

I just find these little annoying things that stop me from really wanting to use other launchers.

 

[Pifanjr]

Steam and Epic are the only launchers I actually use to start a game. I do use GOG Galaxy, but only as an overview of all of my games, I don't use it to launch games. For all the other launchers I just use a shortcut on my desktop to launch the game.

 

[neogunhero]

Steam will forever be my favorite game launcher because all the same reasons others listed here. It just works and it works the best.

Epic would be my second pick. Not as robust with features as Steam, but the UI and responsiveness are good. It works well and the free games are a plus, but even not including that it's the closest competitor to Steam I'd say.

Third would be Xbox just because of it's UI and responsiveness as well. The app works pretty smoothly and has come a very long way since it was first released in ~2018. The only issue is that no one really wants to buy games there that are also available on Steam. The only reason you would do that is if you also play on an Xbox console frequently and the game supports Play Anywhere which is a cross-progression feature for certain games.

Fourth would be Ubisoft Connect/UPlay/whatever it's called these days. I personally don't have an issue with it, just disable the in-game overlay. It's not perfect by any means, the most annoying bug is that it logs me out of my account every month or two. The biggest issue is lack of anything that isn't a Ubisoft game.

I'd tie the EA app with Uplay as well because I also don't have much issues with it, even back when it was called Origin and people swore the devil himself made it. I remember there being so many people absolutely foaming at the mouth with hatred for the Origin app, I never had that big of an issue with it.

Besides this list, most other launchers don't give off enough of an impression for me to rank them. GOG is fine but I rarely ever use it. BattleNet is so barebones but functional that it's neutral to me. Rockstar Launcher pops up for a split second when launching GTA then disappears.

Either I'm incredibly lucky to not have these issues or I'm oblivious to them. I do get minor bugs and such with them occasionally but not to the extent that some people say. One thing I always tell people when playing a game on Steam that requires another launcher, always open that launcher and get signed in before starting the game, it will save a lot of headache in the future.

 

[neogunhero]

Dishonorable mention: Games For Windows Live. This launcher DID give me countless headaches and issues. I remember trying to play GTA 4 online with a friend of mine and it taking what felt like an hour just to join each others games. Lots of other games would force you to use it even if there wasn't a multiplayer mode. Batman Arkham Asylum was one of them AFAIK, forcing you to sign into a MS account to play the game or having to do some trick to bypass it.

As awful as GFWL was, in a strange way I look back at those times fondly. It was a brave new frontier Microsoft was charting, yet they messed up in every way possible, making it a spectacular failure.