I have a web server that runs my website, this blog, the back-end stuff for some of my games (which report bugs or browse mods etc). I also, sadly, have a ‘smart’ TV, a samsung galaxy phone, a kindle and a laptop and desktop PC. As a result, I am in a state of perpetual update hell.
Long ago when I worked in IT, we were very obsessive about updating everyone’s PCs. The danger of having a virus run rampant on a corporate network was always a concern, and when I worked on city trading stuff, obviously security was the first priority. We were super paranoid about everything being updated and patched. We were the IT gods of security, who would update everyone’s PC to the latest patch for everything before they even knew they were needed. Updates were essential and good. Otherwise all hell would break loose.
These days my attitude has become: Fuck you, updates. I’ll update only if I have no choice.
How on earth have we fallen so far? I think, speaking for myself, its because software has just generally become so staggeringly badly made. To pick on just one example, I’ll describe the hellscape of bug ridden crap that is Battlefield 2042. This is a game I try to play every day, and sometimes it even works. On a good day, I can launch the game, and it will show me a splash screen trying to sell me shit which I can ‘dismiss’, except the coders are too inept to record that I skipped it, so I see it every day. Every time I launch the game this wastes my time and makes me hate the developers.
So then I can select a game and start playing. HAHAHA. Don’t be so naieve. This is not 2001, I don’t get to choose which map to play, or what server to play on. That functionality was ripped out of the DICE engine so it could matchmake for me, to make my user experience 100x worse. Routinely that means joining a game with 30 seconds to the end, and maybe 75% of the time, it kicks either me or my squadmate back to the menu anyway, so I have to start again. Obviously I have zero idea what map we will be playing, because the developer has thought ‘fuck the player, who cares. They will play what we tell them’.
Actually I’m kidding, its way, way worse that this. Because when the game ends, I then have to watch a load of tiktok inspired US bro-culture dance-move/posturing bullshit before being dumped right back at the main menu. Back in the days of Battlefield 1942 or Call of Duty, I could just stay on the same server and keep playing, but not any more. Why? because fuck the player, thats why.
Speaking of which, in call of duty 2, you could play modded maps, in their thousands, and they would auto-download as you connected to the server. The mod tools were free of course. There was no attempt to sell you stupid fucking hats. A server browser, mod support, flawless multiplayer code, and no anti-consumer F2P pay-to-win game-ruining immersion breaking bullshit. That was the peak era for gaming, unlike now. As a gamer, I am just cannon fodder for F2P whales, or someone to be exploited, marketed at and used. Why? because fuck the player. Nobody at the top of EA even plays games anyway, they might as well be selling fucking washing machines.
So…thats just trying to use an existing bit of software. Imagine the joy of being FORCED to download a 6GB ‘patch’ to play that same game, with zero notice, and finding out that this 6GB is a new weapon ‘skin’ and some ‘balance changes’. Who the hell is in charge of the patch process? How the hell can any software be this badly made? I will never buy any game made by DICE or published by EA ever again. Fuck them.
But forgetting games, and returning to PCs and Smart TVs and phones…it gets even worse. I must have updated the Disney app for my TV 20 times in the last year. Why? What new functionality has been added? Anything? I cannot see any difference whatsoever, but we are expected to constantly run updates. With skype its even worse. Skype’s software is so appalling now that it cannot even patch itself. Every time I reboot my PC skype reinstalls itself. And those skype updates have done nothing but make it worse, and slower. Every single ‘upgrade’ is a downgrade.
I will continue to use Windows 10 on my main PC until a bunch of software police smash through my front door with guns. Windows 11 is another 50GB of bloated crap that manages to make all of the UI WORSE but now you get very slightly rounded window corners. Amazing. Truly the work of 1,000 software engineers for a year. Meanwhile it cannot even synch video to sound on video playback on any website, and the ‘upgrade’ to windows 11 permanently halves the volume of all speakers, with no way to ever fix it. The windows 11 upgrade is just a way to wreck your PC. In 2025, Windows cannot play video, or control volume. Things Windows 3.11 could do just fine. Its embarrassing.
Do I worry about malware? yes, and I have a paid anti-malware suite running on both PCs. But over the last ten years the worst malware I have experienced is Windows update. The second worse is probably my samsung phone. Updates take about 20 minutes, never add ANYTHING I want, but randomly change the icons of every installed app, just to aggravate me. Its a phone. The calculator app does not need an update. Ever.
Right now, I have a laptop that works (apart from video and sound, which is unusable) and a desktop that works. I do not want ANY updates from microsoft on anything, ever again. I simply do not trust the people working there to be able to write code. Ditto samsung. Just leave me the fuck alone. If it was possible to globally opt out of all updates on my TV I would do so. These are not new games getting cool feature improvements and new content. They are apps that work. My expectations of software in 2025 are now so low, that simply having programs that vaguely work is the gold standard, and I will not risk any new code written by people who clearly have zero clue what they are doing.