Wuthering Waves Adds Launcher Inside Steam, Players Answer With Negative Reviews

Kuro Games' Wuthering Waves is getting hammered on Steam, with players tearing into the Version 3.8 update for swapping Steam's own download and update system for Kuro's launcher running inside Steam.

The daily numbers show exactly when the mood turned. On November 10 the game picked up 27 positive and 7 negative reviews, then on November 11 – the day the Version 3.8 patch notes went up – negatives jumped to 24 against 36 positive.

November 12 is where it fell apart, with 136 negative reviews and only 39 positive ones landing in a single day.

Over the last 3 days that comes to 167 negative and 102 positive reviews, putting recent sentiment at 62% negative compared to 21% negative in the weeks before.

Those earlier weeks were steady, with no single day from mid-October onward climbing past 12 negative reviews, so this is not a slow drift but a cliff tied to one patch.

The biggest complaint is the launcher itself. According to reviews, the Steam version now has players download Kuro's official launcher inside Steam and then download the game again through that launcher, which one reviewer summed up bluntly: "We don't need a launcher within a launcher."

As players tell it, Steam is now the launcher for the launcher.

The second complaint is the reinstall. Several players say their existing install was wiped and they were told to redownload somewhere between 80GB and over 100GB just to keep playing.

It does not stop there, according to one reviewer with 136 hours, who says that after pulling 60GB through the non-Steam launcher, the game still asked for another 20GB of downloads in-game.

Long-time players are taking it personally. One reviewer with 319.9 hours says they moved to Steam specifically to get away from the launcher, while another with 433.5 hours says they are done playing on PC or spending money until the change is reverted.

Kuro did flag the change ahead of time. Its November 5 notice, "[Important Notice] Details on Client Update & Launcher Replacement on Steam," said it would upgrade the client download and update mechanism on Steam during Version 3.8 maintenance to support tiered resource downloads split into UHD, HD and SD.

The stated goal is letting players pick the tier that suits their storage and device, and the November 11 patch notes added categorized resource downloads and resource cleanup on PC – listed as initially available as a limited test.

What Kuro has not addressed in its official Steam posts is the forced reinstall players are describing, or the backlash that followed once the update actually landed.

If you play on Steam precisely because you wanted one click and one client, the reviews make the ask pretty clear – players want Steam handling the updates again, the way it did before Version 3.8.

Steam reviews, day by day

Sources: Wuthering Waves on Steam (user reviews), Wuthering Waves developer announcements. Figures checked 2026-11-12 09:51 UTC.