It’s in everything I do nowadays. Annoying popups telling me what I can be doing with whatever it is the case. New armor drops. Browse the Store for new items. Did you know that Notepad automatically saves your notes now?

Just… Shut the fuckup, game or program. I already know what I’m doing, I absolutely do not need to browse an in-game store to look something that I’m absolutely not buying, especially from you. I don’t need to captivating messages telling me that FIFA, I mean, EA Sports FC 2025 is now available at at 40% discount for PS5 owners and that I should buy it right now despite the fact that I got it for free (well, ‘free’) via PlayStation Plus. I don’t need to know that I can use Copilot to write something via word, or that you alreadyenabled text prediction, taking the joy out of writing.

The experience for the end-user is getting more and more downgraded as time passes, with less features, then removed features, then they get suddenly reintroduced as something new, and by the lord, they have to call their attention to it. Just stop it. Let me browse the options on my own. I’m not even advocating for user empowerment or anything, just some basic decency to use the program, application or game that I’m using currently.

And no, I’m not against tips and tricks, but when stuff goes completely full screen and doesn’t go away until you go somewhere else to do something related to this thing, only to annoy you until you click to go away is what gets me annoyed. Or the fact that you should definitelybrowse the in-game Store for in-game items that are absolutely not pay-to-win, or some sort of ‘give us lot of money and we’ll give you less fake currency to spend on this game’.

When people say that older things used to be better, this is what they meant. Programs or games were completely obtuse and outright malicious to users, but you got smart by trying to figure out by using it. And sometimes the devs didn’t do that on purpose, it just happens to be that way. And we were shaped by it, turning into smarter versions of ourselves.

Don’t even get me started on uninstalling programs. Gacha games (that I don’t play) use a cute crying chibicharacter asking “are you sure you want to uninstall?” like I’m gonna be feel bad that a bunch of pixels on my screen and binary data on my drive is gonna disappear. To the limbo you go, you absolutely piece of shit.

So, yeah, devs (myself, I’m making a game), I have 0 patience for that crap, and if you pull it, I’ll find a way to make it shut up or if I can’t, remove it from my view permanently.