When 2K removed the annoying launcher, it broke a bunch of XCOM 2 mods.
At the end of 2024, 2K removed its launcher and everyone cheered. This wasn’t just another piece of enterprise malware, it was preventing Linux users from playing BioShock and affecting the performance of Midnight Suns. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all good news.
Look on the XCOM 2 Steam forum and you’ll see threads noting that some mods no longer work and installing them may cause constant crashes. Similar complaints appeared on Reddit. Using the Alternative Mod Launcher, a community project that helped players bypass the 2K launcher, doesn’t help either.
Testing this myself, I found that XCOM 2 would only launch with certain mods enabled and would not work no matter what launcher I tried – both the old and new options provided by Steam, and an alternative mod launcher. The unifying factor seemed to be that mods with the Wrath of the Chosen expansion as a hard requirement worked, but mods without it did not. Mods like the Armory Camera Tweak, which prevents large characters from blocking the UI, were good, while mods like the Imperial Guard Voice Pack, which lets you broadcast your squads’ voice lines ripped from Dawn of War, weren’t .
However, I found a solution to this problem. Go to the directory where Steam stores your XCOM 2 mods (this should be Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\268500) and then open the subdirectory for all the mods you have installed. Each one will have a file ending in “.XComMod” that can be opened using Notepad. If there is no “RequiresXPACK=true” line, add it at the end and save. Do this for every mod you download, enable them in your mod launcher and they should work. I’ve tried this with 40 different mods so far, from one that updates the reward deck when you enter Avenger, to one that allows you to equip your soldiers with Sisters of Battle armor, and they seem to work fine .