How To Get Rid Of The Terrible New Launcher For Civilization 5

A few days ago, Civilization V received a 800MB update through Steam. Holy smokes!, you might think, Firaxis has given me an early Christmas present! Sadly, this is not the case and in fact, you’ll find your lovingly-hung stocking is filled with a giant steaming turd, in the shape of an obnoxious new game launcher that no one asked for.

The lead image is a screenshot of the new launcher. No new features — well, ones anyone cares about — just a news page and a bunch of ads.

Nice.

Worse still, the new UI goes out of its way to obfuscate the launcher’s one and only useful feature: the graphics API selector. By default, it’s set to DirectX 9, with the rest of the choices hidden away.

It’s not until you click the little white arrow that the other options appear.

I’m fairly certain this is going to lead a lot of less tech-savvy people to play the game in DirectX 9, simply because it’s not obvious how to change it now.

The good news is you can go back to the old launcher. Reddit user “pedal_pusher” explains the process (which works for the Steam version):

  • Open up Steam and navigate to your LIBRARY.
  • Right click on the game in your library and choose “Properties.”
  • Selected the “BETAS” tab.
  • In the text box to “Enter beta access for to unlock private beta:” enter the password “ineedlegacyaccess”.
  • Click on the “CHECK CODE” button.
  • You should see a confirmation message that access has been granted.
  • If not already selected in the drop down, select “legacy” and click close.
  • Steam may require you to download and update for the game. Wait for this to happen or force it using “LIBRARY -> DOWNLOADS”.
  • Once the game has been updated, click “PLAY” as usual and you will be running the legacy branch.

While the fix works, you’re still at the mercy of Firaxis / 2K, which could pull this “legacy” branch at any time. Hopefully, they come to their senses and make the new launcher optional.

PSA: You can disable the new CIV 5 launcher by typing “ineedlegacyaccess” into the betas tab. [Reddit]


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