That's why I use Playnite
Dont buy games from AAA publishers and you mostly have steam or GOG.
Better yet. Buy them from Itch.io directly, since indies are better anyway.
Here is the solution: https://apps.gnome.org/Cartridges/
I will say that I'll take the lesser evil of having an unintrusive launcher for a game that pops up after I select play in Steam (Creative Assembly, Larian, etc.) which can then be closed after the game starts than go back to when everyone wanted you to install a bloated distribution platform to play their specific game (Looking at you Stardock, Uplay, etc.).
But in the shadows of Playnite, one more launcher was made.
One launcher to bind them.
Reason number 217 why pirated games are better.
This is why I buy most of my games from GOG.
The launcher (GOG Galaxy) is entirelly optional, so I don't use it at all and just download the installers for my games (and keep local copies in an external HD in my NAS).
Don’t forget minetest and gamehub
Quite a pain. I mostly buy anything on steam or choose steam keys x this reason.
You guys don't use shortcuts?
I've been using Playnite for the last weeks and I'm pretty happy with the results! You should try it ^^
But honestly, what would be better?
No launchers at all? They do help to organize the game library, synchronize saves across devices, enable achievements and friend lists, make it possible to share game libraries, install all your games from a single place, have a shop to discover new games. Steam even provides basic APIs for games to enable multiplayer. Many of these things could be baked into the game, though that would be extra work some devs might not do.
One centralised launcher? Such a monopoly might lead to problems such as higher prices / less money for game devs (especially the good indie studios that don't have negotiation power), less innovation around that launcher and less effort towards a good experience with few bugs etc.
