Game Pass Ad in Windows 11 Settings Sparks User Backlash 49
An anonymous reader shares a report: Starting with those builds, Windows 11 will show a Game Pass recommendation / ad within the Settings app. The advertisement will appear on both Windows 11 Home and Windows 11 Pro if you actively play games on your PC. Microsoft lists this feature first under the "Highlights" section of its blog post about the update. Some users aren't pleased. "Microsoft has gone too far," news blog TechRadar wrote.
Theyâ(TM)ve gone too far (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm so angry I made a sign [reddit.com]>
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Iâ(TM)m so mad, Iâ(TM)m going to do nothing about it.
This should be at +5 insightful. They'll whine for a few minutes, then half of them will try to turn it into a flex. But they'll never ever switch to a better OS.
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I'm not going to be foolish enough to claim it's the year of the Linux desktop, but I switched finally this year. In about 5 years let's take the temperature again.
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You mean there are still people using Microsoft Windows????
Hahahaha...
This sounds like a case of masochism and self-inflicted pain.
I'm not a fanboi but I am a happy Linux user of over 10 years and I only have one Windows computer in my house. Almost every time I use it (to remind myself what a bad experience is) it spends most of its time updating and even if I try to stop it, it'll do it anyway if I'm stupid enough to walk away from the machine and leave it on for more than a couple of hours.
If you run Wi
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I keep a windows box around for compat concerns. Like my college work gets run through Word once to verify it'll work ok for the professor. Other than that...
LibreOffice could be better but it's usable. Other than that, I have no real complaints. Every problem was soluble.
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I keep a Windows 11 Box to distract any burglars away from my real valuables.
Re: Theyâ(TM)ve gone too far (Score:1)
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https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Vocab word of the day. Things have more than one meaning.
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You mean there are still people using Microsoft Windows????
Hahahaha...
This sounds like a case of masochism and self-inflicted pain.
Stockholm syndrome, is their issue.
I'm not a fanboi but I am a happy Linux user of over 10 years and I only have one Windows computer in my house. Almost every time I use it (to remind myself what a bad experience is) it spends most of its time updating and even if I try to stop it, it'll do it anyway if I'm stupid enough to walk away from the machine and leave it on for more than a couple of hours.
Yup, the absolute worst part of using Windows is the BOHICA updates (Bend Over, Here It Comes Again)
They make the computer unstable on downloading - Windows 10 and 11 aren't capable of dealing with audio it would seem. Then something seems to break in many updates anyhow.
Funny how Mac and Linux computers manage to have things work when the update, and the users can update when they are ready, not when Microsoft says so. Funny how Microsoft has so many security flaws
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I'm seeing a lot of public pro-Linux sentiment on gaming stories on social media. Windows 11 is just too crap. Even a lot of gamers still using Windows for gaming are now dual booting and doing everything else on Linux. Most of the games that don't run on Proton have kernel DRM, and a good number of gamers aren't interested in that — usually for pragmatic reasons like "screws up my PC" and not moral ones.
Year of the Linux desktop it ain't, but it's still encouraging.
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But they'll never ever switch to a better OS.
you mean for gaming. and you are being serious. based, like the say.
you see, "gaming" is not the same as "playing games". gaming is the one and only reason i have a windows box. there is near zero chance that many of the games and most of the specialized hardware i use will ever run on anything else.
if they now decide they want to display ads on it, that's too bad. they shouldn't be allowed to do that, i paid for the os, but i guess that's complicated, i probably agreed to that in one of the multiple licen
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I still find it baffling that Microsoft thinks *PC* gamers might want to pay for Game Pass to get a limited selection of shitty titles that you can't even play long enough to finish the games anyway. PC gamers as a demographic don't really fit into the mold of the kid who will only play a game for a week before getting bored or it falls out of fashion with their clique.
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But they'll never ever switch to a better OS.
you mean for gaming. and you are being serious.
Exactly!
Gaming is a popular niche market, and its adherents who are Microsoft owned will do whatever Microsoft wants them to do. Do you have a price limit when they go to the upcoming subscription model?
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i'll cross that bridge when i get there. as said, there is no practical alternative, plus it's not as dire as it seems (yet). i was wondering why i wasn't seeing any ads; turns out the whole thing can be disabled just by disabling "notificatons and tips", which i had already done promptly after install, along with game mode, apps and all sorts of similar "opt-in by default" crap. a subscription is out of the question.
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I got mad once, so I switched to an alternative OS and I haven't looked back since.
Can't really do anything more, but it is interesting to see how far they'll regress, so I read these threads from time to time ;)
Buy crappy software, have crappy software... (Score:2, Insightful)
And from a crappy vendor in addition. Really no surprise. Users have been asleep for so long that MS, rightfully, assumes it can to anything they like to them.
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Not really. Windows has lost a LOT of customers in recent years. Home users don't see a home computer as vital as it once was, since smart phones or tablets do what they want. Enterprise users are migrating to online applications - in part because Microsoft is telling them to - and thus no real need for an actual Windows machine in many cases, some even going to Linux for development work while still having full online enterprise applications access.
Microsoft is no longer in the enviable position that t
Understandable (Score:2)
If you spend $150 million to make an 8k game running at 160 fps where the object is to put a little dot on something and push the button to make the something flail about and fall down, you need a lot of advertising.
Oh and then there's the other kind of game where the object is to become the mighty Aragorn. But first you have to cut down fictional 400,000 polygon trees for six years.
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You don't understand, some of those pixels belong to potential digital waifus.
Ad in settings (Score:3)
So is there a place in the settings menu where you can disable ads?
(Permanently, not just until the next time you run windows update)
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What you need to do to permanently disable ads is open a web browser and search for "How to install Linux". Added bonus, you will find it also fixes a number of other issues from Microsoft.
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It's a part of the shutdown menu.
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You can turn off the ads, although Windows' settings apps are awful so just figuring out where to do that can be a challenge. (The fastest way to find most of the interesting settings options in Windows is by doing a google search for an explanation.)
Permanently, though? That is never a guarantee with Windows, since Microsoft is known to issue many updates that simply reset all settings for a component rather than migrating them.
Simple solution (Score:2)
Stop playing the games. Delete your account and stop all payments.
The only way to make a company change is to hit them in their wallet.
However, I can guarantee less than 100 people will do this because it's so simple.
Re: Simple solution (Score:2)
I only have Win11 as a VM for a few apps only available on Windows (the most important of them is Solidworks). If I could get that to work in MacOS or Linux using Wine without needing a CS degree I'd do it. I may try anyway since the Linux install would be a virtual machine.
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I found this [github.com] which may or may not help you. I don't have solidworks so I can't try it.
Flamebait? (Score:2)
I hope that was accidental mismoderation, because otherwise, buh?
Computing is in a hard place right now (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Computing is in a hard place right now (Score:5, Informative)
...MacOS went through a messy ARM transition and killed a lot of legacy apps in the process
What?
The ARM transition was basically seamless, thanks to Rosetta 2. The mandated shift to 64 bit caused a mess, as a bunch of old apps stopped working because the programmer never recompiled them. But that was years before the transition to the M series CPUs.
Re:Computing is in a hard place right now (Score:4, Informative)
Linux messed up the Wayland transition
Yeah, my Raspberry Pi 4 running the old (non Weyland Raspbian distro) is *much* faster than my Raspberry Pi 5 running the Weyland version. Even moving the mouse with the Weland version pushes the CPU to 30 percent. Sounds crazy but I've done several totally clean installs and tried several different mice -- with exactly the same result.
Re: Computing is in a hard place right now (Score:2)
That happens when you're getting your software from the Weyland-Yutani Corp. But it could be worse. Next time, your OS could come bundled with a chestburster.
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Fifteen years ago the people maintaining X said it couldn't be maintained any more, so they had to make a new thing. And that thing still doesn't do all the things X does, nor is it faster, nor is it more stable.
Maybe the biggest problem is the devs, not X, because they don't seem to have been able to do better. "This software we've been working on for years is terrible! We should make some brand new software!" Uhhh...
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And my AMD 7800X3D 4090 equipped workstation with 555.58 drivers is _amazingly_ fast and obliterates X11 in every way possible.
Just because you have issues doesn't mean that Wayland is "worse".
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My KDE has never been more stable. And its Wayland, so no idea what you are talking about.. btw: I've got 3 screens..
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Why is this upmodded? It's complete bollocks.
Wayland works great on literally every device I have thrown at it, ranging from AMD to nVidia - the only issues with rolling distributions I saw lately were due to kernel upgrade and firmware issues, which have nothing to with with Wayland itself.
Bye bye game pass (Score:1)
I cancelled game pass ultimate over the incessant ad garbage. GG Microsoft. I use a Mac as my daily driver now also. Microsoft seems to be intent on killing off the consumer side of their business.
Just to be clear, the ads don't stop popping just because you have game pass, they just try to sell something different to you.
But it's personalized! (Score:2)
The idea that we want personalized, relevant corporate content is Bespoke Spam. We don't actually get to personalize it ourselves, like shutting it off. It's all push, push, push by marketing departments and and poor tools for us to make our own decisions about that content we actually want. The dog wags you.
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I don't consent to ads on my hardware
Yes you do. You agreed to it in the terms of service.
And This Folks... (Score:2)
And this folks is why I own a MacBook and a Debian laptop. Fuck me, but what a swamp Windows has become
Advertising/gaming platform (Score:3)
... "Microsoft has gone too far ..."
Of course, TechRadar demanded their audience stop buying Xbox products: For some reason, I doubt they asked gamers to vote with their wallet.
Where exactly did TechRadar think an advertising/gaming platform would go? If they thought Windows 11 was an operating system, well, it sucks to be them.
Ads suck (Score:2)