Game launcher (like battle.net or epic game launcher) for indies

Hey,
I'm looking for a game launcher for my game, free or not it doesn't matter.
The main features that I'm looking for are:
- installation of the game, with pause and resume capabilities
- game updates
- servers status
- news feed
- very basic user login, friend list, and chat

Is there something out there that I can use?
Most importantly
Do you think that a game launcher can add to the experience of the players and worth the cost(time and money)?

 

Those are some advanced features. I seriously doubt you'll find a ready-to-use solution that implements everything you listed there.

You can realistically use the main menu scene for all of that instead.

The only benefit I see in having a launcher is if it's a normal desktop app then it wont be using a lot of PC resources, so people will be more likely to have it running in background, so they can use the chat while not playing.

A good example of this is LoL launcher, where you have a lot of people just using it to chat.

 

Would only consider the friend list and chat going onto more advanced features..
The other stuff is all pretty reasonable and expected for a launcher to be even worth having.. otherwise it's a pointless launcher imo..... problem is doing a cross platform launcher... think most the frameworks that cater to doing cross platform anything on desktop with gui are all kinda S*** in one way or another. If you just stick to 1 desktop platform like windows then the choice of framework/language to use is a little simpler// C#

Anyway I can't stand most the modern platforms with friend/im functionality can ogo back 20years ago to far better IM apps, then the S*** out today. It seems most don't ever consider providing users with an invisible feature that lets them chat to people without showing everyone they are online, might not mind some people knowing I'm online but you get the point.. so F***ing dumb and annoying.. valve are the epitome of fking garbage for the presence and they hold in the gaming industry and money they make off that platform from developers and consumers.. every decent multiplayer game should have it's own launcher and try to sell separately for that alone that monopoly needs breaking up, lets face it the social friends messaging part of it is worse than icq /msn messanger from 15 years ago ..total joke platform.. not saying it's the worse.. the worst goes to the Epic Launcher.. for both having a name like Epic.. and providing a launcher that is total complete S***..

Well I will say that if the game is on steam, then I do get a little annoyed when developers have taken the lazy approach of not just making the steam user login straight into the game, instead they force you to create a completely separate account to then run the game through steam launcher only for it to open another launcher that needs a separate login.. that's the bad way to do it, it should be optional and upto the user to do should they want another way to login to the game outside of going through steam.

The only way I like to see it done is if the those who buy the game through steam and launch it through steam have a seamless login process through the games own launcher when launching via steam. If not then well it's not great, but I do still think any decent pc game having it's own launcher is a good thing when done right.

And if the game can be bought on steam, and the account can be merged with the developers own user system and let the user completely bypass having to run the steaming S*** platform to play the game and just use the games own dedicated launcher merged account login then it's good. Best of all you can play the game without everyone checking how many hours you sunk in the game or were playing with status on invisible Because the industry of fking retards have made even playing a game impossible do without lacing all there tracking S*** everywhere, literately have to make separate steam accounts to buy some games and then re-add only certain friends for those games lol ...fking useless valve.

 

@Player7 please calm down.
Just 'cause you're annoyed that people can see you were online doesn't mean most people do as well.
I actually believe it's nice to know if someone is online before you message them.
Otherwise everyone would just be asking each other "Hey are you online?" all the time.

 

Not they wouldn't, and just too add to how that stupid that is, I have people on my friends list that just leave the client on 24/7 ...so sending a message and waiting for a response is just the same. Ofc because steam is so fking S*** for the shear amount of users it has, and doesn't let you not show the game you're playing then you do have some idea if someone is active on the other end. Either way no privacy for them still means no privacy for me.. Speaking of privacy and data.. Wouldn't be surprised if valve is in bed with the derpstate either like faceborg, goolag etc basically all you overvalued monopoly trash corps data harvesting end users.

 

@zoran404
Thanks for the responses, I finally found something interesting online missing some features but it is a start

patchkit.net

@Player7 I also think that every game company should have its own game launcher.

 

For a small indie studio there is only one good "launcher": Steam.

 

Only for a game that has to be kept up-to-date and only if you are not planning on releasing on Steam. Unique launchers for every company, let alone every single game, only serve to segregate players. With Steam I don't have to worry if my friends have all of the launchers I have (in addition to keeping them actively loaded) to be able to message them.

 

P.A.T.C.H. has 5 different fully customizable launchers / automatic patchers. 2 can be built into your game (one I think is fully built in, the other is a unity game window popup) and 2 fully customizable with source code launchers, one is WPF the other is Winforms. The 5th is a command line one. Here is what it looks like below, you can have patch notes, links, whatever, (the main window has a web viewport so you just have a page display)

Since the launcher has full source, you can easily add login, connect it to any other system you want, add server health check, anything you want. You can host the downloads on an ftp, or cloud server, just so long as the patcher can reach it, you can embed login credentials to the files so that people can just up and download it without the patcher. When V3 officially releases it will have SSH login as well.

Not only that, it is an awesome binary differential patch creator that makes builds of your game (not just unity stuff, it can be used to patch pretty much anything) and the makes patches based on the changes of one version to another, so you end up with real patches, as big or as small as they need to be, it uploads them wherever you want, then the client on the user end just automatically downloads it (or the full game if they just bought it and need to download it)

Highly recommend. V3 is coming out soon and its even better.



https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/p-a-t-c-h-ultimate-patching-system-41417

 

Thanks, man. looks like exactly what I'm looking for.

 

This. Steam is all the launcher you'll ever need.

If you want just an installer, with no launcher, I've had success with Inno Setup.

 

Well well well just noticed this today... https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1667896941884942467

Felt strangely relevant to some of the rants I put down here, I should put more Steam issues for fixing here on Unity forums right kek

Anyway those options have been a long time requested. Still Steamspy might need some other public api to use though.... https://twitter.com/Steam_Spy/status/983899259291557888 or Valve replace it with one of there own more transparent overviews in that area.

 

I know it's a really old topic, but have you hear about PatchKit? You can find a thread about it here: https://forum.unity.com/threads/wip-patchkit-game-patcher-with-hosting-service.458017/

This launcher is still in development. If you have any questions or would like to talk about using PatchKit, don't hesitate to contact me.

 

Looks nice. How exactly does it work, though? You get the source of the patcher to customize but you have to upload the builds to your service and that's the only way to do it? It's just personal preference, but I try not to use anything I don't have complete control over and access to. If I don't have source and I can't modify and host myself, then it's just not for me.

Obviously, everyone feels differently, but that was just why I am asking about how the whole thing works.

 

Closing because is a necro pointing to a thread that hasn't been updated in a long time. Pretty much a double necro.