I’m glad it’s highlighted on Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown in particular, because that was the first game I’d bought from Ubisoft in years, and the extra launcher deterred me from considering buying any of their other games for a long while still. EA still has launchers on older games like It Takes Two and A Way Out and Dragon Age II and Inquisition that create obstacles for LInux compatibility and offline play, but newer titles like Split Fiction and The Veilguard no longer have the extra launcher problem. It’s good to see Ubisoft following this trend, and hopefully they can stop standing in the way of their own success.
I’m not making a specific defense to Ubisoft, but I do get ticked by the generalized claim “The artist already got paid”, which is what I started to reply to. In many cases, it’s a disingenuous and misleading way to excuse piracy.