Cities: Skylines II - How to Skip Paradox Launcher (Windows and Linux)

Here is a guide on how to skip Paradox Launcher in Windows or Linux.

How to Skip Paradox Launcher on Windows

Method credit to Sima | Marco

Step 1

Show file extensions in Windows
Open Steam game directory, where Cities2.exe is located
Create a new file Cities2.bat (!NOT! .bat.txt or .txt)
Open this file with Editor
Insert
Cities2.exe %command%
Save and close this file

Step 2

Open Steam
Rightclick on Cities Skylines II
Select Properties
Insert into startup parameters
Cities2.bat %command%
Exit this windows and start the game

UNINSTALL PARADOX LAUNCHER

Don’t forget to uninstall Paradox Launcher, as it runs in background.
Use Windows Apps – Uninstall for it. No further cleanup needed.

WHY TO AVOID PARADOX LAUNCHER

Paradox Launcher violates personal data protection rights, according to the European law.
This software installs without your agreement, scans your PC, captures every available telemetrics. Paradox stated not selling this data to third party companies, but everyone knows this is BS.

SOME PICTURES

FAQ

This guide works for almost all Paradox / Steam games.
Steam overlay might be disabled while using this.
To display onscreen fps i suggest using MSI Afterburner / Rivatuner or Hwinfo 7.64.
Steam achievements will work / confirmed.

How to skip Paradox Launcher on Linux

Method credit to Outfrost

The trick

The usual method of skipping the Paradox Launcher we know from Cities: Skylines 1 and other Paradox games – putting “<path to executable> %command%” in the launch options – doesn’t work with Proton.

You can use this command instead:

eval $( echo "%command%" | sed -E "s#Launcher/dowser.exe#Cities2.exe#g" )

How?

1. Right click Cities: Skylines 2 in your Steam library, and select Properties
2. In the “General” section, at the bottom, under “Launch Options”, paste the aforementioned command
3. Hit Play!

How it works

When Steam runs a game using Proton, the compatibility layer commands become part of the game’s command line. For me, it looks something like this:

/home/outfrost/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/reaper SteamLaunch AppId=949230 -- /home/outfrost/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-launch-wrapper -- '/home/outfrost/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamLinuxRuntime_sniper'/_v2-entry-point --verb=waitforexitandrun -- '/storage/warehouse/outfrost/Steam/steamapps/common/Proton - Experimental'/proton waitforexitandrun  '/storage/warehouse/outfrost/Steam/steamapps/common/Cities Skylines II/Launcher/dowser.exe'

We can’t just replace the whole command with the path to the game, since that won’t invoke Proton properly.

Instead, we take the whole command line text (%command%), and filter it through sed to replace “Launcher/dowser.exe” with “Cities2.exe” in the command line text. Then, we use eval to execute the resulting text as a command.

The command Steam ends up running, on my machine, looks something like this:

/home/outfrost/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/reaper SteamLaunch AppId=949230 -- /home/outfrost/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-launch-wrapper -- '/home/outfrost/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamLinuxRuntime_sniper'/_v2-entry-point --verb=waitforexitandrun -- '/storage/warehouse/outfrost/Steam/steamapps/common/Proton - Experimental'/proton waitforexitandrun  '/storage/warehouse/outfrost/Steam/steamapps/common/Cities Skylines II/Cities2.exe'

If you want to see what your full command looks like, you can change the launch options to:

eval $( echo "%command%" | sed -E "s#Launcher/dowser.exe#Cities2.exe#g" | tee ~/cities2_cmd.txt )

and then open the file cities2_cmd.txt in your home directory.

Acknowledgement

Shoutout to this guide about bypassing the 2K launcher for Civ 6 and the ProtonDB community for the idea to use ‘eval’ and text replacement.

Cities: Skylines II – How to Skip Paradox Launcher (Windows and Linux)