Mildly Infuriating

Youtube wasn't that bad when you could skip one 5 second ad as well.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: We have a HUGE Apathy epidemic right now, and it mostly affects younger people (Gen Z on down mostly but some younger millennials too). I think this is mostly because they were born too late to realize that things don't actually have to be this way and could in fact be better if people just...tried. But they've been beaten down and had the phrase "that's just how it is/always been" beaten into them so much that they just stopped caring.

I never really thought about the fact he’ll eventually retire. That is indeed a frightening thought.

What is this circle jerk??

I don't know that fairy tail you are experiencing, but Stream pops up an add window that you need to click past almost every time I open it.

Both Xbox and Steam are in the business of selling games, and they both put items they sell in the user's face.

Sure Steam is more consumer friendly, but pretending they are free of sin on this current subject is foolish and dilutuonal.

I kinda hope Valve gets put into some kind of employee-owned foundation when Gabe leaves. Doesn't need to be a non-profit, but it would be great if it could be set up in such a way that it can never be sold, only dissolved, and that if dissolved all IP and assets become open source/public domain.

Being in your 30s really means getting to grow up though the golden era of gaming. Real life gets in the way now so I just have the games I liked, maybe buy one or 3 (non AAA) titles a year, and that's good for me. I'm still young enough to be confident I'm not being an old fart when I say, there really is barely anything worth your time or money in the industry anymore. There are of course exceptions, but man, its rough.

I hope it all fails and has to start again before 'valve, and EA company' becomes a possible timeline

For the unaware:

First posted in 2013, I believe..

It should be illegal for companies to put ads in a system you paid for.

I've never seen that.

But what I think it happening is that you have your lockscreen background image set to "Windows Spotlight"? The web-based one? That's usually the nature image in the background of MSN search, too? Because yeah, sometimes MS swaps that out for a full-screen image about a new game release, and that in turn would then also show this on the lock screen.

At the risk of being That Guy, Linux has come a long way for gaming and distros won't pull this crap. Just sayin.

I’m on Win11 and don’t have that. Think you need to turn off “Spotlight Backgrounds” somewhere in settings. While it gives you new backgrounds, it uses it as advertising.

I would've legitimately sell my xbox on the very same day. It's probably an overreaction, but i'm not looking at ads on my paid xbox with a monthly subscription.

The minute i saw that was the minute i changed away from those types of backgrounds on the login screen. In the control panel you can just change it to anything you want

the paid Xbox Game Pass which removes games from the library on a regular basis

This isn't a fault. It's a subscription service. It's not an ever-expanding library of games you keep forever and it was never supposed to be. Many games are only there for a period of time.

There's a couple AAA games lately I've enjoyed, but yes I agree with you. Marketers are killing their own market for short term gains. The last several multiplayer games I've had are just as terrible as you describe.

I've put more hours into a 30 dollar factory game than all the AAA games over the last several years combined. Shows how just some TLC can make a great game, but marketing will only hurt it.