Rockstar Launches Its Own Launcher And Store, Gives Away GTA San Andreas

It seems that the days of Steam being the de facto PC launcher and game store is now over. Epic Games exposed kinks in its armor now almost anyone and everyone wants to set up a store of their own. The latest to join that train is Rockstar Games who just announced its Game Launcher that, unsurprisingly, seems to revolve around its biggest franchise, Grand Theft Auto.

To be fair, game publishers have long had their own game launchers where gamers could collect and run games that they release. The big difference between then and now is that more and more publishers are starting to also use their launchers as storefronts to buy their games as well.

Rockstar Games might not actually be as big as their name suggests but that name is indeed synonymous to Grand Theft Auto. It also has other titles under its belt, like Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne. There are also the one-off hits like L.A. Noire and Bully but, really, its biggest moneymaker if GTA.

If you do have a massive GTA collection, then the new Rockstar Games Launcher might be exactly for you as it collects all those games under a single roof. That's true whether you bought the games digitally or have the physical disc at hand. And like Steam but unlike the Epic Games Store, the Rockstar Games Launcher supports cloud saves on all titles.

If you don't have any of those games, you can, of course, buy those from the launcher as well. Rockstar is even helping gamers start their collection by offering Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, a GTA classic, for free for those installing the launcher starting today and for a limited time only. Of course, if you already have GTA games purchased from Steam, Rockstar's separate launcher might seem like an exercise in redundancy, unless you're a die-hard Rockstar fan.