All this subscription cancer...

[Octopuss]

I guess I just want to vent somewhere or something. I hate this shit and am sick to my stomach. Whoever came up with this idea first should be hung from the balls and pissed on.

I was looking deeper into the possibilities to uninstall Edge, and came upon this suggestion to use this Revo Uninstaller program. Sounds nice, even has a portable version, cool. I go check out the website, right, what's it cost for Pro version (the only with portable variant)? Make it like $30 and I'm sold.... But what the actual fuck? Yeah, right, a SUBSCRIPTION! For a fucking uninstaller!
What's wrong with the world these days? Why are people even playing this game? Are these companies so greedy or so incompetent they can't make living out of standalone licences like everyone did for the previous 30 years or something?
And then they moan about people pirating their shit. No shit!!!!

 

[hat]

Been thinking similarly about ads. Cable TV was not supposed to have ads, then they figured out they could make more money if they shoved ads in there anyway... then along came Netflix, then you found out if you liked this show and this show and that show you needed 3 separate subscriptions to watch them all. Google takes over YT and shoves ads everywhere, and even if you pay for premium you get to deal with everyone's sponsorships which are just baked into the video, oh now I want to listen to some music on Spotify, uhoh need a subscription for that too... ads in the damn Start menu, ads in this Overwolf shit people use for Minecraft mods, uhoh here comes Manifest v3, now it's harder to use adblock... leave me alone dammit! How long until getting ads beamed into your dreams like in Futurama is a reality? Honestly I'm surprised piracy isn't more widespread when everything's a subscription "service" and chock full of ads no matter what you do.

 

[AusWolf]

I guess I just want to vent somewhere or something. I hate this shit and am sick to my stomach. Whoever came up with this idea first should be hung from the balls and pissed on.

I totally agree. I have absolutely no subscription plans. My games are on Steam, my films and series on DVD / Blu-Ray / external HDDs. Even my mobile data is done via a monthly auto top-up.

I was looking deeper into the possibilities to uninstall Edge, and came upon this suggestion to use this Revo Uninstaller program. Sounds nice, even has a portable version, cool. I go check out the website, right, what's it cost for Pro version (the only with portable variant)? Make it like $30 and I'm sold.... But what the actual fuck? Yeah, right, a SUBSCRIPTION! For a fucking uninstaller!
What's wrong with the world these days? Why are people even playing this game? Are these companies so greedy or so incompetent they can't make living out of standalone licences like everyone did for the previous 30 years or something?
And then they moan about people pirating their shit. No shit!!!!

Why would you even use an uninstaller? It's done with one click in the control panel.

 

[Hyderz]

my take is only sub to the ones you want to use, and discontinue it when there is no more things you want to see..
it takes a few steps to go through the process of unsubscribing, it is a hassle i know.

back before streaming took over... video rental place requires you to pay for a membership card and the each movie's price everytime you want to see
a movie... games you want to play and new movies is only overnight and games i remember is 2 nights..

 

[Shihab]

I understand -and share- the hate for subscription-based services, but non-perpetual licenses have been around for a very long time now. Even before SaaS crap became the norm (although I guess back then it was largely confined to production/enterprise software).

As for why people do them, multiplying monthly rates by a typical life span and compring it to the perpetual price is difficult math, mate! </s>
Seriously, most consumers are idiots, but the biggest driving force is mass adoption by devs. Especially in niches that are practically monopolies (Adobe PS et al, MS Office, etc).

 

[Macro Device]

Broken window theory. A couple big fish broke some windows (= threw ads where they don't belong/made stuff perfectly viable as a single purchase sub-based) and other fish were like, "what the hell" and started gunning other windows down. Now we have a moon touching skyscraper worth of sharded windows and no one has money to fix it. Piracy is so heavily discouraged and punished that not everyone is willing to risk it and tell the corpos to buzz off. Not only that, some parts of the market are monopolised (hello, Google) and a lot of people are enablers. If you're wiring your hard earned quid for a several dozen quintillion subscriptions for movies, music, gaming, creator stuff and other tomfoolery despite not actually being dependent on aforementioned "services" you're a huge part of the problem.

I personally only am subscibed to electricity and other utilities in my house. But this is what happens to everyone living in a flat. It's not life or death, so I decided better of it. Why are other people not like that? A rhetorical question.

 

[AusWolf]

my take is only sub to the ones you want to use, and discontinue it when there is no more things you want to see..
it takes a few steps to go through the process of unsubscribing, it is a hassle i know.

back before streaming took over... video rental place requires you to pay for a membership card and the each movie's price everytime you want to see
a movie... games you want to play and new movies is only overnight and games i remember is 2 nights..

I rarely even rented anything back then. I've always said, if a film is worth watching, then it's worth owning on a physical disc and watching it multiple times. If it isn't worth owning, then it isn't worth watching, either.

Why waste my time (and money) on watching hundreds of thousands of hours of worthless shit on subscription plans, when I can just buy an old classic on Blu-Ray for £2 at CeX (second-hand entertainment store)?

 

[Octopuss]

I don't have have as much of a problem with subscription in very specific cases, but in general, it's just wrong.
If you as a company could make living selling software 20 years ago, you certainly can nowadays. If you can't, tough shit, perhaps try different industry...

Why would you even use an uninstaller? It's done with one click in the control panel.

You cannot uninstall Ms Edge in Windows 10 even when you are in the EU (ask Microsoft why...), so I was looking into options that supposedly don't mess your OS up.

 

[AusWolf]

You cannot uninstall Ms Edge in Windows 10 even when you are in the EU (ask Microsoft why...), so I was looking into options that supposedly don't mess your OS up.

Oh, I didn't know. I've been on Linux since October. One more reason not to look back.

 

[Vayra86]

You shall own nothing and be happy.

Signed, corporate.
Luckily we still have options. Use them. Morals? Tit for tat

 

[happytohear]

My uncle asked me about this software in a big Norton subscription he had and he didn't even use the software ONCE. I was flabbergasted...
Supscriptions are a lucrative business modell and I am sure they are fine with or even want people to forget about them. I heard even AOL is receiving some serious money that way, still.
Consumers tend to be clueless and copmanies like to exploit that. The government's job should be to defend the people against this.

 

[Shihab]

The government's job should be to defend the people against this.

The way people are voting these days makes me doubt that there is a consensus on this statement.

But, like I said, people are idiots, so...

 

[BSim500]

I guess I just want to vent somewhere or something. I hate this shit and am sick to my stomach. Whoever came up with this idea first should be hung from the balls and pissed on.

It's one of the reasons I have zero regrets "wasting time" ripping a large 2000 album CD collection and put it on a large micro-SD card on my phone. No ads, no subscriptions, no Internet = no problem.

As for paying for uninstallers to uninstall bits of Windows, don't bother. Best pointer I give you for 'power users' is the forum MyDigitalLife. Plenty of actively managed free, open-source community projects (NSudo, DISM++, SlimDown10, W10 & W11 Telemetry Repositories, reimaging, etc). Be aware though that every CU (Cumulative Update) for Windows will tend to reinstall SystemApps you previously uninstalled (inc Edge). Similarly, both Edge itself is increasingly used by other Windows components plus EdgeWebView2 is a runtime dependency needed for other apps (a bit like Chromium Embedded Framework), ie, force removing all Edge related files can break other apps / parts of Windows. It's absolutely possible to lock it down / shut it up though via Group Policy, etc.

 

[PLAfiller]

+1, I too share the sentiment. Like what's wrong with paying for a license and be done with it? Or pay for update price only?

Subscriptions everywhere! What you get now is hopefully a free version with some functionality for "casual" users and then subscription....like why? If it's a hobby or early stage of a small "garage" hustle that hurts. Every time you don't utilize the product from the subscription you loose basically.

Recently I ended my Youtube premium after they hiked the prices after New year and I only "feel" it on mobile stuff. PC is fine, I tried Brave browser for the first time and it blocks everything...I am shocked.