Why Do Some Games Take a While To Launch?
We’ve all been there: you click “Play,” your screen fades to black, and then… nothing. The game takes forever to launch. It’s loading, maybe checking for updates, verifying files, or just staring at you with a blank screen and spinning icon. Whether you’re on PC or console, this slow startup can be frustrating especially when you’re ready to dive in ampland. But why does it happen?
Here’s a look under the hood at why some games take a while to launch, and what’s actually going on behind that long load time.
Initial Load
Modern games are massive. It’s not uncommon for titles to weigh in at 50, 100, even 150+ GB. When you launch a game, it’s not just opening a file it’s loading assets like textures, models, shaders, and sound files into memory. Open-world games technology and graphically intense titles often need to prepare huge amounts of data before gameplay can begin.
The more complex and detailed the game world, the longer it may take to load everything necessary to get started.
Anti-Cheat and DRM Checks
Many multiplayer and online-connected games launch background software during startup—things like anti-cheat systems (e.g., Easy Anti-Cheat or BattlEye) or digital rights management (DRM) services like Denuvo. These checks happen before the game itself even fully boots, and they can cause significant delays, especially if there are version mismatches, server authentication issues, or updates in progress.
In some cases, the anti-cheat tools launch separate processes or kernel-level drivers, which can slow things down noticeably.
Patches, Updates, and Background Syncing
If your game is connected to an online platform—Steam, Epic, Battle.net, PlayStation Network, Xbox Live—it might check for the latest patch or synchronize cloud saves before launching. Even if you just updated the game, some titles perform additional verification steps when starting up.
This is especially true for live-service games, MMOs, or games with frequent seasonal content, where syncing data between your local machine and remote servers is critical.
Intro Videos and Unskippable Sequences
Let’s not forget the classic culprits: intro logos, legal disclaimers, and cinematic sequences that can’t be skipped. Some games include multiple splash screens from developers, publishers, engine creators, and middleware providers. They may only take a few seconds each, but together, they pad the time between launching and actually playing.
While some PC players mod or tweak config files to bypass these intros, consoles typically don’t allow such shortcuts.
Hardware Bottlenecks
If your storage drive is an older HDD instead of a faster SSD, game launch times can increase dramatically. Modern titles are optimized for high read speeds, and slower drives can choke on asset loading. RAM and CPU also play a role—especially if the game has to decompress large files or prepare the runtime environment dynamically.
Running out-of-date drivers or background tasks hogging resources can also be silent contributors to longer launch times.
Engine Initialization
Every game runs on some form of game engine (like Unreal Engine, Unity, RE Engine, etc.), and launching the game means initializing that engine. It must load engine components, handle rendering pipelines, set up shaders, and prepare game logic systems. For complex engines with dynamic world generation or custom physics, this startup sequence can take time.
Developer Design Choices
Some games deliberately delay launch sequences to allow background loading or to make transitions smoother. For example, some RPGs preload multiple areas to reduce in-game loading times. Others might run scripts to randomize world states, seed procedural environments, or dynamically load saved player choices before showing the main menu.
While this is better for seamless gameplay, it means launch time takes the hit up front.
Can You Speed It Up?
Yes and no. Here are a few tips that might help:
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Use an SSD: The #1 upgrade that drastically improves load and launch times.
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Close background apps: Free up system memory and CPU power.
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Keep drivers and OS updated: Newer drivers can improve performance and compatibility.
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Skip intro videos (on PC): Some games allow this via config files or launch options.
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Disable overlays: Steam, Discord, NVIDIA overlays can sometimes interfere or slow things down.
Final Thoughts
While long launch times can be annoying, they’re often a side effect of complexity, security, and convenience. As games continue to evolve with richer visuals, deeper systems, and online integration, there’s a lot more going on in the background than just booting up a program.
So next time your game takes a minute to launch, remember: it’s not just being slowit’s working hard to load a whole world.