The Expanse: Osiris Reborn and Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy developer Owlcat Games has developed its own PC launcher to keep its collection of dense games together for easy access.
Owlcat Games’ CRPGs are some of the greatest in the genre with Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader being my personal highlight. However, while each of the developer’s games have their own dedicated audiences, there’s surprisingly little crossover between them.
In a recent announcement, Owlcat explains that the many gamers who play one of their games – for example, the new in-alpha Dark Heresy game – aren’t necessarily aware of the other tiles they create like the also-fantastic Pathfinder.
“The portfolio of Owlcat Games has grown substantially in recent years,” the studio said in its announcement. “With so much going on, we noticed it’s becoming increasingly challenging for our audience to track the info about our games. And for us, as a growing studio with multiple new unannounced RPGs already in production, being able to reach our players is crucial.
“For example, according to our research, a surprisingly large portion of the PF2 audience who express a clear desire to play a ‘similar CRPG’ have never even heard of Rogue Trader. This, upon reflection, is understandable—in this age of information overload, it’s incredibly easy to miss even news that might be of interest. Therefore, we felt we really needed an effective cross-promotion tool for all our titles.”
Starting its testing period on January 27, 2026 only for players of the Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy Alpha, Owlcat also explained that the game launcher is 100% optional for fans. Upon booting the game via Steam, you’ll have the option to go through the launcher – which will feature news and other additions – or simply launch the game.
The launcher will allow players to buy any Owlcat game regardless of platform, access additional content such as OSTs and artbooks, enter giveaways and more. Additionally, Owlcat promises that the new launcher is completely optional with no mandatory registration and “will not collect any data from your computer”.
“While we’re making sure that the launcher is as seamless and lightweight as possible and does not bother you with mandatory registration or any other similar annoyances, we understand that some people may still simply not be interested,” the developer sai.
“That is no problem – if you do not wish to see our news or use any of the services provided by the launcher, through Steam you will always be free to choose to launch the game directly or through the launcher. It will continue to operate just fine without the launcher.”
Owlcat is also asking for feedback and additional features that players would like to see for its new launcher. Of course, the biggest request is the addition of an in-house mod manager for all of the studio’s RPGs which would be a fantastic reason to use the launcher in the first place. (Really, this should be a priority.)
There has also been some backlash to the very idea of a new launcher with some gamers pushing against the addition with one player saying: “your [sic] going to force us to download a program we may not want to use, and take up More space on our hard drives than your game needs to, just so you can shove ads for other products down people’s throats?”
Even within Steam, the addition of other launchers has been more common than some players would like. CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 games have their own launchers, Paradox games require a launcher, and many EA and Ubisoft games require to go through their own launchers. However, few launchers are completely optional like Owlcat’s will be.
Alongside new DLC for Rogue Trader and continued development of Dark Heresy, Owlcat Games is also working on its first AAA-like title: The Expanse: Osiris Reborn. Seemingly the first ever true Mass Effect clone, the upcoming game will introduce a lot of gamers to Owlcat for the first time which makes the creation of a launcher a strong business decision.
