RIP Bethesda Launcher: Here’s how its nearly full transfer to Steam will work

Enlarge / Bethesda will finally dispose of its publisher-exclusive PC-game launcher starting in April. (credit: Getty Images / Sam Machkovech)

In a welcome change of pace, a video game maker has announced the retirement of a "launcher" app for PCs, as opposed to announcing and releasing yet another one to a crowded market.

Bethesda Launcher, as maintained by the game maker and publisher of the same name, will fully shut down at some point in "May," the company announced on Tuesday. Thankfully, affected users will get to carry every BL purchase and license over to Valve's Steam storefront starting in "early April."

This week's announcement FAQ does not clarify exactly how license transfers will be handled, leaving us to assume that users will log in with their affected credentials to a website and receive a list of Steam redemption codes. In promising news, Bethesda insists that all games' paid DLC and microtransaction currencies will transfer to the Steam versions seamlessly, so long as players log into a Bethesda.net account while in-game. The same goes for Fallout 76's "Fallout 1st" membership, though any recurring subscriptions handled via BL will not auto-renew in April and beyond. Those users will have to set up a new subscription plan via the game's Steam version.

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