I dunno about all this, I just play games from Atari, NES, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, Playstation, etc. Maybe I'm simple but I'm also having fun :P

I hate this, above Steam client is slow as hell (GOG isn't much better). But you can hack it in most games to start the game clicking in the Icon. Look at the properties of the games in the folder, there is usually a game launcher, it is this one whose icon appears when this game is installed, it is this one that launches Steam (or GOG), but apart from that there is usually the original executable (look also in the subfolders, mostly in bin) which directly launches the game without Steam or GOG.

I had ME legendary edition in my steam library. I wanted to play. It asked me to sign up for all the EA bullshit.

I still haven't played it.

well at least I don't have to keep the CD in the CD Drive to actually play the game now

Hate this bullshit so much.

missed the bit about windows forcing an update and reboot, then crashing to an irreparable state, forcing a reinstall of the whole os and games that were installed.

Made by someone who wasn't around back then. Getting games to run was just as if not more tedious than it is now.

I remember having to hunt high and low for the dune 2 manual to find out how heavy an Atreides airfield is because that’s what anti-piracy measures were back then.

Also it was much more of a crapshoot whether or not a game would work at all. Some games just completely refused to be played outside of specific hardware, especially when it came to video cards. Stupid messages like “sorry, you must have a GeForce 2300 or newer to play” that literally checked if your video card name started with some specific string…

Similar kind of thing with sound cards. Most games had a couple options for sound: if you have a sound card that contains the magic words “sound blaster” you got to enjoy nice sounds! Otherwise hope you like some kinda shitty half-attempt at MIDI sound.

And every game ever came with an EULA, if it wasn’t in the game it was in the manual or in some readme. It’s just as meaningless now as it was back then.

Then when CDs came out, sometimes they’d get scuffed and become impossible to install, so you’d have to end up buying a game twice because your cousin got a hold of it.

Things haven’t changed that much. There’s still a lot of shitty games, with a few that are great. It’s more like micro transaction or “free-to-play” games instead of shovelware now for the most part it seems though.

Everyone remembers the classics and forgets the duds!

I hate that this is so accurate

Some of my favorite games from back in the day had a half dozen vendor intros. There were a few years where they were completely out of hand. It's not all so bad these days.

Half of that never happens to me tbh and the vendor intros were mostly a thing in 2010ish games (for me).

But something that is not on the list and I hate is if steam just starts another game launcher where you have to click something (like Witcher 3 or cities skylines).

you can disable steam ad windows