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Deuterium Oxide

Distribution Manager
Paradox Staff
15 Badges
Jan 13, 2014
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Hello! I’m Anders Törlind, Product Manager for the service we call the “Paradox Launcher”, as part of our Player Services team at Paradox Interactive. We’ve seen a growing number of questions in the past few weeks as we’ve started to see the launcher deployed on more of our games. I’ll try to answer some of them and bring more clarity on this topic today.


So, what is the “Paradox Launcher” anyway?
It’s a splash screen that several of our games use, it provides some features for these games (see below). The main purpose of the launcher is to centralize the development of these features so that the game teams can focus on what they’re best at: making games.

The launcher is a separate binary that is shared among several of our games. This means that there is typically only one installation of the launcher on your computer. It also attempts to keep itself up to date, meaning that different game teams don’t have to spend time making new releases of their games in order to get new launcher features or bug fixes delivered.


Why are we developing the launcher?
Long story short; costs and time savings. Having one central team making a launcher is better than having multiple game teams making multiple launchers or implementing identical features in their games.

The other benefit is that it enables us to offer a similar experience to our players on different distribution platforms. For example, in the olden days, only Steam users would get mods support for our PDS titles. With the launcher integrating PDX Mods, this can be made available to all players without the game team having to make any significant changes to the game itself.


What are the future plans?
With a team dedicated to launcher functionality, we have the capacity to develop features that individual game teams could not justify the cost of. We are currently focusing on the modding functionality, and exposing capabilities built into Paradox Mods. Essentially, our current priority is to make it easier for our players to use and manage their mods.


Isn’t it some form of DRM?
Nope. It does no kind of Digital Rights Management and will not prevent access to any content.


Is it tied to telemetrics or data tracking?
The launcher uses telemetry in the same way as all of our games do. It is covered by the same privacy policy (see our EULA), and abides by the GDPR rules for all users. So, no change tied to the launcher there, it’s the same policies and agreements that were already in place for all of our games.


What games are going to get the launcher?
Most of our upcoming PC titles will have the launcher. It will also be introduced for a selection of our existing titles, prioritizing those that can benefit the most from its features.


How does this relate to the “Paradox Launcher” found at play.paradoxplaza.com?
Ahhh! Nothing quite like a confusing naming scheme! The Paradox Launcher found at play.paradoxplaza.com is our “Distribution Client”, something similar to the Steam Client if you will. This client development has been on the back burner for some time while the team has been focused on the “splash screen” launcher you are probably here to read about.

In a not too far off future (we hope), these two functions - splash screen and distribution client - will be consolidated for those of our customers who choose to play through the PDX Distribution system. Other users shouldn’t notice any change from the current situation, though.


So what are all these features then?
The launcher does a number of things, it’s kind of our swiss-army-knife for Paradox games! Not all games necessarily have all of those features implemented yet, but I’ll give you a shortlist of fun stuff!
  • GDPR compliance
  • Login and account creation
  • Single-sign-on with distribution platform (Steam, Microsoft, more in the pipeline)
  • Account connection (Steam, Microsoft, more in the pipeline)
  • Resume from last session
  • DLC activation / deactivation
  • Mods installation (For all non-steam users)
  • Mods management
    • Load order
    • Activation / deactivation
  • Mods upload (Steam Workshop, PDX Mods)
  • Game settings (typically settings that would require a restart of the game)
… and probably more depending on when you read this. Once again, your favourite game probably does not use every single one of these, but if the game team wanted to, the features are already in place.

That’s it folks. Hope it answers some of your questions, but if you have more, feel free to ask in the thread!
 
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So where can I download older titles I bought, that show up in my game list, but not on the launcher and especially for games I do not have steam keys for?
 
So where can I download older titles I bought, that show up in my game list, but not on the launcher and especially for games I do not have steam keys for?
You get them from where you got them before, in general. From the DVD if a hard copy, otherwise the download service you bought it from - Amazon, GoG, GamersGate or wherever.

There has been no announcement that older (non-Steam or Steam) games will be made available on the launcher, it has only carried newer games so far.
 
The mod part of the launcher seems worse than before, i can see less items on my list now than before, now i have to scroll twice as much as before (i know its not that critical but it is REALLY annoying), and now i cant even see if my mods are outdated or not? Before i could see it with a red symbol, now its nothing, i get a info as i start the game - great, that means i have to probably restard the game multiple times in order to get a modded game running, so is there any way to either fix this or go back to the old one?
 
I’ve tried asking in the EU4 tech support thread, with no resolution, so I’ll try here.
Playing in an early 2011 MacBook Pro (OS 10.13.6 High Sierra). Whenever I try to launch a game, either through Steam or the Launcher itself out of the Paradox folder, the Launcher begins to initialize, and then immediately closes and/or crashes. I do not receive any error popups or crash logs. Looking in the cpatch.log file shows closed network connection messages, or that I connect and then immediately disconnect. @AndrewT hypothesized it had something to do with the clock setting, but I was not able to verify on my end.

I would really like to find out how I may play with the new launcher, as I am a huge fan of both the games and Paradox as a company overall. I fear that if I can’t find a solution, I won’t be able to be a continuing customer, by sheer lack of choice.
 
Need help, this 2.4 launcher update didn't work on my mac. I now get the following error when launching Stellaris (homedir is my username):

An error occurred while updating Stellaris (missing executable):

/users/homedir/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/Stellaris/dowser.app

I look in the above directory and do find a unix executable named dowser.

I'm hoping I don't have to uninstall and reinstall the game through Steam due to the load time.
 
The mod part of the launcher seems worse than before, i can see less items on my list now than before, now i have to scroll twice as much as before (i know its not that critical but it is REALLY annoying), and now i cant even see if my mods are outdated or not? Before i could see it with a red symbol, now its nothing, i get a info as i start the game - great, that means i have to probably restard the game multiple times in order to get a modded game running, so is there any way to either fix this or go back to the old one?

Hi there! We are looking at various different ways to make the mods list easier to navigate, but we'll need a bit of time to implement and QA any changes we make. Initially we are looking at enumeration of the mods and a search function so you can locate the correct mod to toggle. Rest assured that this area will be iterated on continuously!

As for the "outdated mods" warning, it's present in the launcher but the Stellaris team did not have time to implement it for this patch. Be sure to bug Jamor about it, I'm sure he'll love me more for it ;)
 
Playing in an early 2011 MacBook Pro (OS 10.13.6 High Sierra).

You have been heard - Our QA has had some problems sourcing older hardware, but we are working on it! Have you tried launching the game directly without the launcher? Admittedly not a great workaround, as you can't easily toggle mods and dlc, but it might just get you playing anyway?
 
the launcher isn't working well , aftet I closed it keeps working in background , and there is not a way to close , doenst show in task !

It's hard to know what the problem is with so little information... Are you playing on Linux perhaps? If so, a quick
Code:
%> killall cpatch
should do the trick.
 
I have a problem similar to what @mysticdueler described. Though I am running Mac OS Catalina and since the upgrade I am unable to play any games that have paradox launcher. I done the verification fo files (doesn't help) I also re installed games still the same issue.
 
You have been heard - Our QA has had some problems sourcing older hardware, but we are working on it! Have you tried launching the game directly without the launcher? Admittedly not a great workaround, as you can't easily toggle mods and dlc, but it might just get you playing anyway?

Thanks for the response. Launching the app directly does start the game, but without any DLC active, despite owning it. I know from EU4 forums that this is a known issue. I’ll just keep a close eye on development and wait hopefully and patiently for anything to come my way.
 
Something that I've seen MANY people ask for is a better way to manage mods. Can you add ways to sort mods into folders, and create selections you can easily choose between? Considering that some people play with 50+ mods, and have over 200 downloaded, a simple list is a nightmare to try and navigate through, and if you accidentally forget a mod, you can't play on your save (or can play, but stuff breaks).

Having multiple ways to sort the mods in a list would also be very useful: Alphabetically, by version number, by download date, stuff like that.
 
Also, mods do not show their compatible version, or a warning if that version is not the same as your game version, making managing even more tedious.

EDIT:

Custom tags can't be used with PDX mods system either. Thanks.

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Oh and updating a mod will clean up the description, which it doesn't notify about.
It neither fetches the old one, so if you don't have a backup. Godspeed.


Was it even beta tested?