Microsoft patents system to freeze games and inject ads during downtimes — watching commercials earns ad-free playtime credits

[u/screwdriverfan]

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/microsoft-patents-system-to-freeze-games-and-inject-ads-during-downtimes-watching-commercials-earns-ad-free-playtime-credits

[u/assidiou]

Guess who owns the OS the majority of PC gamers use.

[u/Bestyja2122 → u/assidiou]

Yeah I don't think picking a fight with steam is something anyone would like to do, and even if they did something steam quite literally has its own os now

[u/ToflixGamer → u/Bestyja2122]

There would be other gaming-focused OS like Bazzite too.

[u/angrydeuce → u/assidiou]

Heh, MS is going to be moving Windows to a subscription based service as well. It's been in the works for years, they just haven't pulled the trigger yet.

The requirement to have a microsoft account in order to get past the OOBE in Windows 11 is part of that groundwork. That's how it's going to verify your subscription status and lock your physical hardware behind a monthly paywall.

Want to use more than 16GB of RAM? You need W12 Premium. Want to play games? You need the gaming add on that unlocks GPU acceleration. Want more then GbE networking? Want to use more CPU cores? Want to customize your background?

It's going to kill their share of the consumer PC OS market, but that's such a tiny piece of their income (I work in IT, you should see what they're raking in for licensing servers and azure and shit, makes Windows look like change from grandma's ashtray in her car) that they don't give a fuck. PLUS, they have the muscle to lock exclusivity in so that if you want to play the game at all (a subscription itself, most like) you need to have a valid subscription to Windows, too. And the AAA publishers will buy into this because MS is going to give them big wheelbarrows of cash to develop the games in the first place.

Going to be a lot of people switching to linux....assuming the hardware itself doesn't also end up getting subscription locked by then. Can't wait to have a sub to Nvidia and Microsoft and a Studio to play a fucking video game. Gonna be awesome!

[u/UnidentifiedBob → u/angrydeuce]

thats okay ill play the games on steam.

[u/AnarchBeetle → u/angrydeuce]

You could just pirate everything. Where there is a will, there is a way.

[u/turbospeedsc → u/angrydeuce]

When that happens I won't enjoy it, but ill move to Linux for something else than my plex server.

As for games, there a big enough library of current games so far to keep me busy a couple decades.

Heck there is enough unplayed games in my steam library to keep me busy a couple years.

[u/Running-In-The-Dark → u/angrydeuce]

Well I mean the EU is already kicking Microsoft aside to use Linux and Linux has already been pretty damn user friendly for awhile already. So if MS wants the shotgun, please be mindful and at least make sure it's loaded with buckshot.

[u/Emotional_Solid6538 → u/Running-In-The-Dark]

Many governments are switching to Linux since years. Microsoft doesnt even make its money from Windows these days. Its mostly from their enterprise products and cloud

[u/angrydeuce → u/Emotional_Solid6538]

Yeah the amount we pay monthly in just Office subscriptions is 5 figures. We end up dropping mid-high 4 figures on server licensing, which is all based on core count, and the requisite user/device CALs. And then the cloud bullshit (storage/server VMs) and now copilot licensing and teams calling plans. We are not a very large company, either, like 7500 users across the US, with a few dozen in Europe and SE Asia.

That's why I say that they really could just do whatever the fuck they want because Enterprise is thoroughly locked in and Linux admins cost a lot more than Microsoft does. Shifting off of VMWare when Broadcom went scorched earth was one thing, moving off of Windows Server would require so much money they'd never do it, not to mention how many of our core apps are designed around Windows Server.

Google has really positioned themselves in much the same way, but the opposite. Workspace is a tragedy but they're making all their money from adsense and youtube and scraping metric fuckloads of data on the consumer side of things. Their Enterprise side can just be in perpetual "yeah put it in the suggestion box" mode for all time for all they care. They know they similarly have edu and nonprofits by the balls there.

This is precisely why companies should not be able to get as large as they have. When they have their tendrils spread across so many different markets, there is zero competition or desire to really pay it much mind because that costs money, either in R&D or competitive pricing, and that will not make line go BRRRRR.

If you had told me this is where we would be 10 years ago I never would have in a million years predicted it. This shit is just fucking bananas.

[u/Emotional_Solid6538 → u/angrydeuce]

Google controls the web and funds competitors js to not be illegal as a pure monopoly

[u/Yuzumi → u/assidiou]

Yeah, I stopped using that over 2 years ago. I'm good.

[u/assidiou → u/Yuzumi]

Friends made fun of me for switching 8 years ago. I told them I was preparing for when they decided to switch. Now they're asking about Linux.

[u/Yuzumi → u/assidiou]

I've been using Linux off and on for a quarter of a century. I've wanted to switch for most of that time and I did switch on my laptop over in college after spending half a class period with windows unusable because it was forcing an update.

I had dual boot on my desktop but the games I would play were just too much of a pain for substandard results most of the time. Proton helped, but early on it wasn't quite there. I also had an Nvidia card which didn't help.

Then I got my steam deck. After spending a year or so seeing how well games worked when I built a new desktop a couple of months before I made the switch I got AMD because I knew I was going to jump ship at some point and did so when I heard a rumor that the AI BS was coming to windows 10.

Over a year ago I decided to hop to CachyOS and realized I hadn't booted into windows in like a year and a half. Coppied anything I thought I might need off that partition and reclaimed the space when I installed Cachy.