Launch .exe directly to save time

[JanPokorny]

Most games on Epic are able to be launched directly from .exe, not requiring the Epic client to be running. It would be nice to include a feature that switches a game to direct launch, as opposed through the Epic client.

Pros

• time saved (Epic happens to be exceptionally slow sometimes)

  Cons

• not compatible with DRM
  • note that not many games have it
  • also note that I have no way to check how DRM'd games on Epic behave when launched from the .exe -- if they just run the client, like Steam games do, this is a non-issue
• not compatible with cloud saves

Simplest implementation would be a manual checkbox somewhere in game settings commanding it to be launched directly. (As I believe both cloud saves and DRM status are hard, maybe impossible to detect, making this infeasible to be the default option.)

[FriendsOfGalaxy]

Thanks for proposal, I like the idea, but not as a default feature. Simultaneously look like it requires total refactor, so I won't do this in the near future.

This feature would also require:

• knowing which games can be run w/o launcher - how?
• providing additional option for user somehow (Galaxy do not support such feature)
• refactor process watcher (now it is optimized to watch launcher child processes)
• searching for proper executable (currently we know only directory) - registry? scanning directory heuristics?

Other cons:

• losing game time tracking from epic backend

[JanPokorny]

For reference, this is the same issue for Playnite: https://github.com/JosefNemec/Playnite/issues/1068

[Varstahl]

Implemented here, installation manifest contains a flag to determine if the game can be played offline.

[FriendsOfGalaxy]

Closing as GOG has official integration now. GOG is informed about all remaining issues.