Launchers are bundling roughly 4 main services into one: (a) automatic update, (b) storefront, (c) mod portal, and (d) social networking. The most important se

Launchers are bundling roughly 4 main services into one: (a) automatic update, (b) storefront, (c) mod portal, and (d) social networking. The most important services are of course the first two, and in this sense, you can think of them as basically something like apt, but built with software that requires you provide proof purchase before downloading it. This helps explain why having to use multiple launchers provokes such frustration among users--it means you basically have two package managers running on your system. Maybe if software update were a part of standard OS services, it wouldn't be such an issue, but as it isn't [on desktops], another platform providing such services becoming popular for doing so shouldn't be surprising.