Bypass the 2K Launcher (and Fix the Game) After BioShock Infinite Update

I've owned BioShock Infinite for a number of years now on Steam, it's a good game to an extent; certainly not as good of an experience that the original provided but it has its moments, and it mostly shines with its plot and storytelling (in my opinion anyway), it just suffers from having mostly generic gameplay which is probably considered even worse by today's standards. However it's another casualty of 2K Games' campaign of shitting their in-house launcher down everyone's throats. A full eight years since it last got updated on Steam, and it got another one the other day, labelled as a "quality of life" update, which in reality has done nothing but harm.

It all but broke the damn thing for me, as whenever I tried running the game from Steam, it would crap out with a "missing executable" error. That missing executable being "LauncherPatcher.exe" - part of the 2K Launcher that was supposed to be included with the update. For some reason I (and a lot of others it seems) got the update to the game but didn't get any extra files related to the launcher, meaning Steam can't find it when it goes to install it. Not that I actually wanted the launcher installed at all anyway.

There is a way of getting around this issue, which is to run the game directly from its main executable (or create a shortcut to it), while Steam is open, however this isn't ideal. The method I'm going to outline below actually allows you to launch the game from Steam again, as you'd probably want to do anyway, so essentially fixes whatever the idiots broke in the update. It should continue to work even if they update the game again with a fix, but in that instance will have the added benefit of bypassing the launcher regardless.

I've previously covered bypassing launchers on Steam with some of Paradox Interactive's games so I'm no stranger to the command I'm about to advise you of, but first of all if you got the update but don't have issues launching the game via Steam, you likely were one of those that actually got the full update along with the launcher. So all you need to do to bypass it is put this in the game's launch options:

"BioShockInfinite" -run %command%

Generally speaking you can use this command to bypass most non-mandatory launchers on Steam, you simply need to navigate to the game's installation folder, find its executable and copy the name of it (excluding the extension) into the quotes in the above command. I have yet to come across any other game that requires -run in the command, as this seems speicfic to BioShock: Infinite. However, I will advise that if you have your Steam game library located in a place other than the default, such as on an entirely different drive for instance, then you'll probably want to put the full path to the executable in the quotes, including the extension. Some games also require the full path even if you do have it installed in the default location, but this seems to be only a small handful.

Meanwhile if putting this in the launch options still causes you to have a missing executable error, you'll need to go to the game's installation directory and do a bit more work. By default the game is installed to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\BioShock Infinite where you want to create a new folder named 2KLauncher. Inside that new folder, create a new text document (not a rich-text or word document, just a plain old notepad one). Rename that file to LauncherPatcher.exe

Note that the text document will have the .txt extension when you create it which as stated above needs to be changed to .exe, though depending on how you set up Windows, the extension may be hidden, but you can easily turn that off by opening an explorer window, right-clicking on "Quick Access" then selection "Options" and lastly going to the "View" tab. Then just uncheck the "Hide extensions for known file types" option in the list and apply the settings.

Once you've done all this, the text document essentially becomes an empty (i.e. fake) executable. You can now go back to Steam and with the above mentioned launch option in place, run the game. After it loads you'll get a window in-game saying it's connecting to your 2K Account but after a few seconds it'll give up and let you in the game properly. Note that if the game starts to load but then just gets stuck on a black screen, you haven't put the launch option in correctly. I also found this can happen when the game's settiungs become a bit mangled, in which case you'll have to go the game's config files and delete them. Just locate the My games folder in your Windows Documents folder and delete the BioShock Infinite folder located there. Note that this doesn't erase any saved games you have as they're stored elsewhere.

Apparently 2K Games' support team are "investigating" the various problems this pile of shit update caused, so they may fix the issue of the launcher not being downloaded for those that didn't get it, but even if they do I still recommend using the launch option above to bypass it. There's little reason for a game this old to have a launcher included in it so long after release and so long after its last update beyond some sort of shady bullshit behind the scenes. At any rate, hopefully they won't realise how easily bypassed it is while they deal with this fuck up and take steps to prevent it in the next patch (if there even is one).

Update (08/09/2022):

They pushed a new update yesterday which appears to have been more a fix for the fact the 2K Launcher wasn't included in the previous update, because now the offending folder (which I had to create) in my game's installation directory now has all its associated shit in it (replacing my fake executable with the real deal). This makes this post largely moot, but even so you can still use the launch option "BioShockInfinite" -run %command% to bypass it. I've tested it and it still works fine. Using it also means the patcher program never runs and so the launcher never gets installed, which has to be a benefit whichever way you look at it.

2K Games edited their previous lacklustre patch notes too:

"EDIT: 2K are aware of possible impacts related to the recent update and working to resolve. Our player's experience is paramount, and we'll update our community with more information as it becomes available."

If their player's experience is paramount then they know full well they should just roll back the update and remove the launcher, given how much this update has actually broken (the Linux version is pretty much unplayable now for instance). Unfortunately corporate greed and lies will always win over any kind of moral obligations, won't they?

Video Games Steam BioShock Infinite Workaround