Bethesda binning their Launcher, will let you transfer games to Steam

After six years, Bethesda Bethesda today announced they're scrapping their Bethesda Launcher, closing it down in May. I imagine it's because not a single person in the world uses the client doodad by choice, only because they were railroaded by a Bethnet exclusive. Bethesda are instead re-embracing Steam, letting people who own games on the Launcher transfer them to a Steam account. You know, Steam, the platform they rejected and tried to fight in their delusions of grandeur. They could've just not, and saved everyone six years.

"We're saying goodbye to the Bethesda.net Launcher this year," Bethesda said in today's announcement. "We would like to thank you for your support and assure you that all of your games are safe."

People who reluctantly used Bethesda's Launcher will be able to import any games they own on it into a Steam account, a process starting in early April. Any virtual currencies you have (like Fallout 76's Atoms) in your Bethesda.net Wallet will transfer too. Save files for most games will automatically transfer to Steam too, though some will require manually moving saves around your drive to transfer (Wolfenstein: Youngblood is the only game they mention as likely needing the manual switcheroo). Friend lists will also transfer to Steam.

While Bethesda didn't remove old games from Steam during their years of delusion, they did try to release new games exclusively on their Launcher. Fallout 76 was notably exclusive to Bethesda's client for its first 16 months before spreading to Steam. Bethesda also once planned to make Doom Eternal, Rage 2, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, and Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot exclusive to their client, but sensibly changed their minds and released them on Steam too. I don't know what good any of this did.

I'm glad to see one of the many bad game launchers die. As much as I think Steam needs strong competition, the Bethesda.net Launcher was not it. Only Bethesda stood to gain from this software, not users and not other developers. Yeah, the Epic Games Store client is still rubbish, but at least devs have received buckets of money from Epic buying exclusivity. Bethesda launching their own client was a selfish gamble which only inconvenienced people.

Have Microsoft been going over Bethesda's books to figure out exactly what $7.5 billion bought them, and found the Bethesda.net Launcher listed amongst an inventory of office supplies and snacks?