I have a dedicated icon shortcut to launch MSFS from my desktop without opening Steam. It’s worked fine since I purchased MSFS from Steam when it was released.
I noticed a few days ago that when I used that icon to start MSFS, Steam started as well in the background. As many of us do, I try to reserve every bit of memory I can before starting MSFS to give me the best chance for a smooth flight, so I wondered if there was a way around it. I checked the Steam boards and found that this is indeed the new behavior by design. As you might guess I’m not a big fan, but I imagine they want us to see their UI so we might buy something.
I sent an email to Steam support asking about a workaround, but I’m sure I’ll get a boilerplate rejection. I wanted to post this in case (1) someone knows a way around it, or (2) someone else notices this and wonders what happened. I’m not sure if the additional pull on the system amounts to much if anything, but I just thought I’d put this out.
Steam always launches with MSFS (if you purchased through Steam). It just always minimized to the tray icon automatically.
I haven’t had a chance to look through it since the upgrade but I’m sure there’s a setting to put it back to minimized launch.
Mine didn’t, and I keep a close watch on all apps that are in my system tray as well as those that are minimized.
It has to, because with the updates there is a steam update first.
So if steam wasn’t running, you wouldn’t be getting the updates.
I did get the small screen that noted that updates were being processed, but then the screen would go away and that was that. Nothing else was loaded. Five seconds later, MSFS would start. I hope someone does find a way to minimize it though.
That’s what I’m saying. The process was always running, you could see it within services of task manager) it just auto minimized / closed the GUI but Steam always ran in the background for the duration of MSFS running.
That’s what has changed is it’s opening the GUI now rather than just going to minimized as a service.
I’ll take a look this weekend and see where it can be turned off to behave like before.
If you’re saying that Steam was loading in Task Manager but not necessarily in the System Tray or icon bar as minimized, then I’d agree since I wouldn’t have noticed it there. Going minimized as a service is what I would like to revert to, if possible. Thanks.