Riot Games To Release Its Own Game Launcher Soon

GOG Galaxy, EA Origin, and Steam are some of many game launchers that are currently available on PC. And if you happen to be a regular player of League of Legends (LoL) and Valorant, well… then get ready to add another one to that list.

According to Riot Games, the developer of the two aforementioned titles, the new launcher is aimed to unify all of its in-house games under a single platform and enable players to access them under a single sign-in. In addition, existing desktop shortcuts to titles such as LoL and Valorant will still work even after the rollout of its platform. However, it was not mentioned if accessing these shortcuts would directly launch their respective games, or redirect users to the new Riot Games Launcher.

From their description, the upcoming platform seems like it might function similarly to Activision-Blizzard’s BattleNet client, where each game features its own tab and respective page for launching it and receiving patch updates. At the same time, the overall launcher will also act as a central hub for users to easily keep up with the latest announcements, news, and events for each title. The developer ensures that the new launcher will be lightweight in terms of resource requirements.

The new Riot Games Launcher will first be available on 20 September for testing, and is expected to roll out to all players worldwide starting 4 October. The team noted that the latter is subject to change, should additional time be needed to iron out any issues as well as to add new features to the upcoming client app.

Epic Games Launcher Reportedly Drains 20 Percent More Battery Than Steam On Laptops

Game launchers are notorious for causing systems to consume more power and if you’re on a laptop, leaving those programs to operate in the background while not connected to a power source clearly means that its battery is going to run out of juice a lot faster. With the Epic Games launcher, it’s actually even worse.

A study by PC World found that running the Epic Games Store (EGS) launcher in the background of a Microsoft Surface Pro 7+ equipped with an Intel 11th generation Ice Lake CPU consumed up to 20% more battery power than when the Steam launcher was active. Moreover, the site found that running just the Steam launcher alone in the background made little to no impact on the battery life of the Surface Pro 7+.

Statistically, the laptop’s battery lasted a total of 587 minutes with Steam active, while running it with the EGS launcher reduced that time to 482 minutes.

It’s a similar story with a Ryzen-based Surface Laptop 3, in which PC World noted that a clear run with the Steam launcher active depleted its battery in 472 minutes, while another run with the EGS launcher depleted it faster by 434 minutes; that’s approximately an 8% difference.

This marks the second time that Epic Games’ launcher has come under the spotlight. Back at the end of 2020, the digital distribution store gained attention when it was discovered that just running the app in the background was causing AMD Ryzen CPUs to run 20°C higher than average.

It was discovered that the surge in temperature was being caused by the launcher sending data to a server belonging to Epic Games. Then, as now, the only solution to the issue was to simply disable or shut down the launcher.