After months of uncertainty, Bethesda has announced today that it will retire its Bethesda launcher, and migrate any existing titles to Steam.
The launcher will be retired sometime this year, while the migration efforts to Steam will start early April 2022. Everyone who currently has purchased a title on the Bethesda Launcher will be able to migrate their games, game saves, and any current funds over to Steam. Bethesda has ensured us that everything will move over, and afterward, there will be zero reasons to log back into the Bethesda launcher.
Now that the Bethesda launcher is being retired, there will be no more additional games added to it starting in May 2022. Not that we’d expect any to be added. Prior to this announcement, the company had made an effort to move its existing library over to Steam. Interestingly enough, before the Bethesda launcher was brought online in 2016, all of the Bethesda titles had already lived on Steam. Then Bethesda started pulling and releasing the on its own launcher. Ironic that what was once on Steam and pulled from Steam is now coming back to Steam. Bethesda isn’t the only one in this camp, as EA has done the same thing.
After Zenimax/Bethesda had been acquired by Microsoft, it was uncertain as to what would happen with the Bethesda Launcher. Microsoft already had its own storefronts, so it didn’t need another. After hearing about the acquisition, I had pondered about this back in 2020. I wasn’t sure if the Bethesda launcher would be absorbed into Microsoft’s storefront or if everything would eventually move back to Steam. We have our answer now.
Here’s to hoping for a smooth process that won’t cause much, if any, issues for anyone. I have quite a few games on the Bethesda launcher, and I’ll be sure to let everyone know how the process goes.
As for the Bethesda launcher, I never understood by Bethesda took this route as Steam was working just fine. Like others, I suppose that the company assumed that if they had a launcher, then gamers would embrace it. Except, PC gamers do not like having more than one storefront, and if companies haven’t realized that by now, they never will.
