VICTORY!!! After waging a very noisy, one-sided war against Google, Valve, and gamers, Epic Games has quietly surrendered

What a difference a year and a half can make.

And, yes, it has been only that long since Epic Games announced the very first EGS-exclusive title: Supergiant's Hades, an early-access game that announced at the Game Awards in December of 2018, and released the same night. That was only a few months after Epic declared that Fortnite: Battle Royale for Android would be side-loadable only from their own digital distribution channel, rather than just making the game available on Google Play like every other developer with an Android app to flog.

Tim Sweeney's Epic Games would go on from there to declare themselves to be so deeply opposed, on principle, to everything about Valve Software's Steam service that they just had to launch a competing service... which offered absolutely nothing to consumers that Steam didn't, and was actually missing a whole bunch of stuff that Steam users were used to. No worries, though, because Tim Sweeney had a plan: to embrace exactly the same platform exclusivity deals that he'd once called evil, back when Microsoft and Sony were profiting from them, and not him.

The message from Epic to gamers was crystal clear: fuck you, pay me. And gamers got the message; they heard Epic loud and clear... and, en masse, gamers refused to pay.

They're not just cosmetic.

One of the main arguments that people often advance for the inclusion of paid, free-to-play-style microtransactions in full-price, AAA videogames is that they're just cosmetic, and therefore harmless. This is an argument that the AAA videogame industry has pushed themselves on multiple occasions, arguing that MTs were entirely optional, and weren't in any way intended to manipulate players, or the games themselves, to squeeze more money out of customers who've already paid for the games themselves.

There's just one problem with that line of defence: it's bullshit. AAA videogame companies absolutely intend for their MT systems to be as manipulative and exploitative as possible, and at least one of them is actively working on ways to make them even more so, as reported by Brian Crecente at Rolling Stone:

Activision was granted a patent this month for a system it uses to convince people in multiplayer games to purchase items for a game through microtransactions.

[...]

The patent details how multiplayer matches are configured, specifically how players are selected to play with one another. That process used by Activision involves a computer looking at a wide variety of factors including skill level, Internet latency, availability of friends and other things. It then goes through a system to first soft-reserve a slot in a game for a player and then assign the players to the same match.

This patent, though, specifically discusses how that system for pairing up players can also be used to entice a player to purchase in-game items.

"For example, in one implementation, the system may include a microtransaction engine that arranges matches to influence game-related purchases," according to the patent. "For instance, the microtransaction engine may match a more expert/marquee player with a junior player to encourage the junior player to make game-related purchases of items possessed/used by the marquee player. A junior player may wish to emulate the marquee player by obtaining weapons or other items used by the marquee player."

The patent goes on to note that the same information could be used to identify which sorts of in-game purchasable items should be promoted.

Activision, naturally, claim that they haven't put this patented technique to use in any games.... yet. Specifically, they haven't added this special bullshit sauce to Destiny 2, in spite of that game clearly having been designed around its microtransaction system. This was just some R&D people "working independently from [the] game studios," and doesn't represent any intention at all (😉) on Activision's part to basically turn all their online-only multiplayer games' match-making systems into the shittiest experience possible, and their players into helpless victims of this cynical exploitation.

Activision's newly-patented match-making system describes exactly the opposite of an enjoyable player experience. It literally sets the player up to fail in the least fair way possible, matching them against players who have out-geared them, and then advertising that gear to losing players in that emotionally charged and vulnerable moment, pushing paid content that will let them victimize other lower-ranking players in exactly the same way... and then going on to reward them with exactly that kind of griefing experience if they cave to the pressure and drop the cash. It's not so much a match-making system as a grief-making system, encouraging toxic behaviour that more-reputable developers are trying to eradicate from their games' online communities.

But Activision aren't planning to ever use it, of course. Heaven forfend!

BULLSHIT.

It is time to stop rewarding these assholes with your money. It is time to stop paying full-price for games are come deliberately broken in order to push free-to-play monetization mechanics at you. Do not spend money on any game that also tries to milk you after purchase for paid microtransactions. I don't care how "optional" or "cosmetic" they're supposed to be. These systems are not intended or designed to feel in any way optional, and they are not harmless.

At least lawmakers in the UK are starting to take an interest in this issue; hopefully more lawmakers in other countries follow suit, so that regulators can impose some controls here, since it's painfully obvious that AAA publishers either can't or won't do so on their own.

Jim Sterling, who's been covering this issue since dinosaurs roamed the Earth, has a pretty good video out on the subject, as do Pretty Good Gaming, who have been covering this issue pretty intensively for months now.

 

Microsoft walks back Office-As-A-Service slightly... for those who can wait until next year.

Microsoft has spent the last few years doubling and tripling down on the Software-As-A-Service business model, transforming everything from Office to Windows itself into services to which users must subscribe.

The problem is that consumers aren't all on board with SaaS; Windows 10 has been languishing below 30% market share for over a years since the Get Windows 10 Free campaign officially ended, and I guess Office 365 isn't exactly luring users away from free and easy options like Google's Drive suite of apps, because Microsoft have just announced that they're going to put out a stand-alone, non-SaaS SKU for those Luddites to buy and own in perpetuity, no monthly fees required.

As reported by Mark Hachman at PC World:

Microsoft would really like you to sign up for one of its productivity subscriptions: Office 365, or better yet, the new Microsoft 365. But for those old fogies who prefer standalone software, Microsoft announced Office 2019 on Tuesday.

Office 2019 will ship in the second half of 2018, Microsoft said, with a preview version scheduled for mid-2018. [...] Microsoft calls Office 2019 a suite of “perpetual” apps, because customers will pay for them with a one-time fee, rather than a recurring subscription.

This is how software used to be sold; a one-time transaction that companies like Microsoft have been trying to replace with perpetual bills for ages now. But Microsoft's desire to extract money from users every month in perpetuity clashed sharply with the simple reality that Office users really were not looking to learn to use a new "feature" of the software every other month.

Most businesses are looking for something that works, is easy to use, requires little or no maintenance, and doesn't bleed their bank accounts dry while delivering essentially nothing by way of additional value for that extra cost. And personal-use customers have even fewer reasons to buy into a subscription-based model for Office, especially with good-enough free options available.

The market has spoken, clearly and unambiguously, and it seems that Microsoft has finally been forced to listen to their customers. By promising a standalone version of Office, Microsoft is simply acknowledging reality, however grudgingly; by not having it ready until next year, though, Microsoft still stands to lose a lot of customers to competing products in the meantime.

On the plus side, this does give Microsoft a second chance to release a native UWP version of Office to their own store. It will be interesting to see whether Office 2019 runs natively in UWP, or is just another PCDAB port of a Win32 executable.

Can I call "backsies" on that?

A couple of days ago, I was praising Microsoft for patching Windows XP to protect users of that old OS against the WannaCry ransomware that was spreading like wildfire through organizations like the NHS. I even said that it was better that they did it late, than that they not do it at all, and praised them for not exploiting the situation to shake down WinXP users for more money, or to push them to switch to Windows 10, either of which would have been more in keeping with their pattern of behaviour over the last couple of years.

Today, however, I'm taking all of that back. Because it turns out that Microsoft had the XP WannaCry patch ready to go months ago, held it back while they shook down their customers for more money, and only finally released it for free once the unpatched vulnerability started taking down hospitals.

From Tech Times:

Microsoft, which called out the NSA and other government agencies for their role in the creation and launch of WannaCry, may itself have been part of why the ransomware was able to cause so much chaos.
As the world attempts to recover from the damage caused by WannaCry, a new report claims that Microsoft could have helped prevent its spread, but decided not to do so.

According to a report by the Financial Times, Microsoft held back a free update that would have patched up the vulnerability that WannaCry used to compromise computers running on the old Windows XP operating system.

The report claims that Microsoft delayed the rollout of the patch because it initially wanted payments of up to $1,000 per Windows XP computer for "custom" support.

Microsoft has struggled to push users and corporations to upgrade from older versions of the Windows operating system to the latest and secure Windows 10, even if the company had already stopped the support for versions such as Windows XP. The significant number of users who have not yet upgraded to Windows 10 were highly vulnerable to WannaCry when it started its worldwide rampage last week.

Microsoft still continues to provide support for governments and organizations, but in exchange for hefty payments. While the company offers special deals for the first year, the high costs have forced entities such as the National Health Service of the United Kingdom to discontinue receiving support.

The National Health Service turned out to be one of the biggest victims of WannaCry, as it spread across 150 countries and infecting about 200,000 computers.

That is so much bullshit, in one tidy package. The fact that Microsoft had the sheer gall to be complaining about spy agencies' stockpiling of these vulnerabilities, when they themselves were using the same vulnerabilities to shake the UK's hospital system down for an amount of cash that they damn well knew the NHS didn't have to spend, is reprehensible. Microsoft's blatant greed, and their wilful disregard for the consequences to innocent bystanders when their broken shit took down the UK's hospital system, all feels like something that should be actionable. If there isn't already a law against this, there should be.

Good job, Microsoft! You've managed to take the one halfway-decent thing you've done in the last two years, and turn it into bullshit. Of all the egregiously anti-consumer shit you've pulled in the last two years, this is literally the worst. Fuck you all.

And fuck the tech writers, too, who keep trying to blame the victims for having been victims here. And, yes, that includes Tech Times, who end their article with this chestnut:

However, the victims of WannaCry may also blame themselves for remaining unprotected against the ransomware attack. Many users and corporations could have prevented having their systems locked by the ransomware by upgrading their operating systems and installing the necessary updates, instead of subscribing to the theory of "if it's not broke, don't fix it."

According to Microsoft, it prefers for users and enterprise customers to upgrade to Windows 10 instead of having to pay for support for older versions of the operating system. It can be argued that Microsoft should have released the patch to fix the vulnerability that WannaCry exploited in Windows XP, but perhaps it would have been better off if customers were not on Windows XP in the first place.

There are reasons why the publicly-funded NHS hasn't replaced all of its fully-functional Windows XP machines with expensive new PCs, you dicks, and the hospital-specific software they're running may not even be compatible with newer versions of Windows. The fact that you'd even think to blame the victims for this, after it's been revealed that Microsoft actually tried to cash in on WannaCry by extorting money from the UK hospital system, is beyond the pale. 

The NHS's patients (also victims of WannaCry) are not at fault, here, and the NHS certainly doesn't bear any weight of culpability comparable to that of the actors who exploited this vulnerability for financial gain. That burden falls entirely on two sets of shoulders: those of the black hats who shipped this ransomware in the first place, and those of Microsoft, who tried to exploit the occasion to squeeze some extra money out of the UK's fucking hospital system. Fuck anyone who says otherwise, and fuck Microsoft, too.

Fuck.

Microsoft's OneDrive app runs like @$$ on Windows OS rivals.

Have I mentioned yet, that I kinda love The Reg's tech writers? Because I do.

From The Reg's Iain Thomson:

Ever since Satya Nadella took over the reins at Microsoft, the Windows giant has been talking up how much it loves Linux – but it appears this hasn't trickled down to its OneDrive team.

Plenty of Linux users are up in arms about the performance of the OneDrive web app. They say that when accessing Microsoft's cloudy storage system in a browser on a non-Windows system – such as on Linux or ChromeOS – the service grinds to a barely usable crawl. But when they use a Windows machine on the same internet connection, speedy access resumes.

Crucially, when they change their browser's user-agent string – a snippet of text the browser sends to websites describing itself – to Internet Explorer or Edge, magically their OneDrive access speeds up to normal on their non-Windows PCs.

In other words, Microsoft's OneDrive web app slows down seemingly deliberately when it appears you're using Linux or some other Windows rival. This has been going on for months, and complaints flared up again this week after netizens decided enough is enough.

"Microsoft has been pulling this stuff for the last 30 years and won't stop any time soon," huffed one penguinista on Tuesday. "If you commit to using their products, expect to be jerked around if you try to do anything other than live in their expensive walled garden."

We asked Microsoft for comment, but the software giant didn't want to talk about it. If we're being charitable to Redmond, we'd say this is a case of Hanlon's Razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Yeah, once again, I don't think that Hanlon's Razor applies: Microsoft does this shit so often, and so consistently, that it can't simply be incompetence. Don't get me wrong, a company that large almost certainly employs at least a few idiots, but for this idiocy to keep happening in every aspect of their business, it has to intentional, and it has to be systemic. Once is an accident, and twice is a coincidence, but we're well past the point of this being one or two isolated incidents; this is a well-established Microsoft pattern.

It is cool to know what that malice/stupidity saying is called, though: Hanlon's Razor. Thanks, Iain!

Now, full disclosure: I don't use OneDrive, so this issue isn't affecting me. My objection here is not a personal one. This is a matter of principle. Microsoft have been working very hard to give the impression that they're big on Linux, and gaining some decent PR in the process, but it's bullshit. When Forbes opined that "Microsoft has decided that the operating system is no longer an important battleground, and that it’s more important to gain market share in cloud (Azure and Office 365) than it is to put energy into battling Linux for application market share," they were mistaken. Microsoft is all about forcing users onto Windows 10, right now, to establish the walled garden ecosystem on which they're clearly relying heavily for their future.

Microsoft really have bet the farm on this strategy. They really don't have a plan B. And their mounting desperation is becoming increasingly obvious, too. This is systemic; they really are doing this, and they really don't care how much damage they do to their own brand and reputation in the process, but they really haven't left themselves any other options. They need the ad revenue. They need their cut of Windows 10 Store sales. They've given too much away, at this point, and don't have any way to walk that back. At least, not one that Satya Nadella can see, or one that he'll sign off on.

GG, Satya Nadella. GG.

"Windows 10's Update is a terrible piece of software"

That's a quote from Alexsander Stukov, an software engineer who spends days running stress tests and cloning virtual machines, whose testimonial is just one of several from this piece by Sean Hollister @ c|net:

Maybe you're delivering a presentation to a huge audience. Maybe you're taking an online test. Maybe you just need to get some work done on a tight deadline.

Windows doesn't care.

Windows will take control of your computer, force-feed it updates, and flip the reset switch automatically -- and there's not a damn thing you can do about it, once it gets started.

If you haven't saved your work, it's gone. Your browser tabs are toast. And don't expect to use your computer again soon; depending on the speed of your drive and the size of the update, it could be anywhere from 10 minutes to well over an hour before your PC is ready for work.

As far as I'm concerned, it's the single worst thing about Windows. It's only gotten worse in Windows 10. And when I poked around Microsoft, the overarching message I received was that Microsoft has no interest in fixing it.

[...]

I know what you're thinking: "How many times do you have to get burned before you get a Mac?" Or maybe a Chromebook. Or even an iPad with a keyboard cover -- anything but a Windows machine that can just spontaneously restart while you're in the middle of mission-critical work.

That's pretty much the direction I've been leaning in recent months. And after hinting there might be a MacBook purchase in my immediate future, I asked a Microsoft spokesperson if the company was doing anything about forced updates.

Here's the statement I got:

Once a machine is upgraded to Windows 10, it will remain current through Windows Update for the supported lifetime of the device, with safety and security, productivity, and entertainment value over time. This is what we mean when we talk about delivering Windows as a service, and it is one of our core inspirations for Windows 10. We'll keep listening to our customers, improving the experience month after month. Windows 10 is an operating system that will run on a range of devices -- from Xbox to PCs, phones to tablets and tiny gadgets -- all of which are connected and kept up-to-date by Windows Update. Both enterprises and consumers benefit. The optimum way to ensure our customers are running the best Windows is to get them the latest updates for Windows 10. Delivering Windows 10 as a service means we can offer ongoing security updates, new features and capabilities - we'd like to make sure people can get access to the latest Windows 10 updates as soon as they are available.

In other words, Microsoft thinks it's super important that you get the updates. "Auto-restarts" are a feature, not a bug.

In fact, Microsoft has been actively getting rid of ways to keep users from disabling automatic updates: in Windows 10 Pro and above, you used to be able to do that from the Group Policy tool. As of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, though, that option is gone. (You can still schedule a restart, but it involves doing a lot of work to change the annoying "ready or not, here it comes" default.)

And while the next version of Windows will let you stave off updates for a 35-day period (if you paid extra for a Pro, Enterprise or Education-grade copy of Windows, which sounds like a moderate form of blackmail), my understanding is that even those versions won't let you cancel an update that's already been delayed and is now about to occur.

In other words: you'll be helplessly watching your computer turn itself off, just the same as usual.

[...]

I think it's time we send Microsoft a message that this isn't okay -- that the computers we bought and paid for with our hard-earned dollars are ours to use whenever we want, not just when Microsoft says so. I need a reliable PC, a computer that's ready for action whenever I need to report on a story, jot down notes from an interview, or liveblog a keynote. Share this story if you feel the same.

There's got to be a better way of handling these updates. Perhaps by automatically installing them when a PC and its owner are both asleep? That's what college freshman Alexandria Seabrook suggested, right after she told me how furious she was with her Windows machine. Or maybe Microsoft could take a page out of the Apple and Android playbooks and let users decide when to update.

I generally like Windows. But if I can't find a Windows PC that's always ready for work, my next computer will be a Mac.

Have a said recently, how glad I am to have dodged this particular bullet by staying with Windows 7? Because I am. Because this is some bullshit, and it's been a "feature" of Windows 10 from the get-go, meaning Home users (i.e. the "free" version) have always been hit first and worst by it, with no end in sight. The only way to get even a little relief is to cough up some cash.

"Fuck you, pay me." Paulie would be proud of Microsoft.

Microsoft have caught a bit of a break in the form of Apple's post-Jobs stumbling, which has seen them imitating the worst aspects of the Microsoft playbook while rolling out their latest iteration of MacOS, or MacBooks which lack most of the ports that people actually use, but MS shouldn't be feeling too comfortable, here. Faced with a business plan that feels like something from Goodfellas, and a product that users find frustrating, at minimum, to actually live with, a lot of current Windows users might still find themselves choosing Mac or Linux for their next PCs.

Microsoft's anti-competitive bullshittery not limited to Edge

From Softpedia:

Microsoft is working at full speed on getting the Windows 10 Creators Update ready for the public launch, but according to a new discussion on reddit, the company might have made a change that many users didn’t actually expect.

A post that went live this morning reveals that the uninstall option is no longer available for some apps that come pre-loaded with Windows 10 even though the same option was there before the latest Creators Update builds.

User jantari reveals that he can no longer uninstall many of the pre-loaded Microsoft apps with a right-click in the Start menu because the “Uninstall” option is no longer there, while in the Apps & Features section of the Settings app, the same “Uninstall” button is grayed out and cannot be clicked.

Other users who responded to this thread confirm that the uninstall option is gone and many of the apps that are part of build 15014 can no longer be removed.

It wasn't that long ago that Microsoft were making news by adding the ability to remove, and keep removed, these same pre-loaded apps (because Win10's Update kept reinstalling them), but it looks like they're backsliding. Because fuck you, and what you may or may not want installed on your PC; if you've installed Windows 10, then as far as Microsoft are concerned, it really isn't your PC anymore. Also, who wants to bet that pricier versions of the OS will include the ability to uninstall these pre-loaded apps?

Linux is looking more attractive all the time.