The dreaded 2K Launcher on PC is finally dead for good and that sparks joy

A blessed day

2K Games

Among all the unnecessary PC game launchers forced on us over the years, 2K Games’ version easily ranked among the very worst – when it was not clunky or broken all by itself, it always found ways to prevent you from enjoying your favorite games the way you wanted to. 

XCOM 2 mods regularly broke down due to the launcher, despite the game officially featuring mod support. Some users could not boot up Civilization without crashing for the longest time unless they circumnavigated the launcher. Most titles published by 2K and using the launcher suffered from severe performance issues after being started through it – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

But the nightmares are finally over: 2K Games announced that the 2K Launcher has been fully removed from all games using it via updates delivered through Steam and Epic Games Store. This process began on November 18, 2024, and was completed on November 25, 2024.

Instead of the launcher, players should now find a file called “2kLauncherRemoved.txt” in their game folders, which can be safely deleted as the last remnant of the horror.

Players still seeing the launcher pop open when they attempt to start their games are advised to open and close Steam or the Epic Games Store to allow any updates to kick in. Users already bypassing the program anyways won’t be impacted by its sunset whatsoever.

Any 2K Launcher files still present on your computer can safely be deleted as well – simply use the Windows search bar to locate the following folders and banish them for good:

• %localappdata%\T2GP Launcher
• %appdata%\T2GP Launcher

Anyone looking forward to Civilization 7 can be even more hopeful now, as the menace of the 2K Launcher has been dealt with. You may still want to keep your 2K account around, however, as Napoleon will be a free bonus leader unlocked by linking this to both Civ 6 and Civ 7.