Microsoft patents system to freeze games and inject ads during downtimes | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft patents system to freeze games and inject ads during downtimes

tomshardware.com

44 pointsricobecks18 comments

Already becoming standard that if you pause on a streaming platform, the page turns into an ad.

I paused because I wanted to see something on the screen, and now I cannot.

JellyFin is great for streaming owned video content.

The challenge is acquiring ownership of video via DVD and bluray purchase, since renting the right to view is the norm today via purchasing only a temporary license to watch.

Just download it anywhere and train an AI model with it, that makes it legal.

Ask your ai to go get it and then its legal

This is a result of not owning the software that runs on your computer, in this case software masquerading as a website. mpv + yt-dlp does not have this problem because it serves the users interests rather than the platform's.

Push based advertising needs to be outlawed. Period. It's one thing if I'm actually looking for something to get your sales funnel, it's completely another to normalize behavior that incents shoehorning advertising into activities completely divorced from the act of searching for businesses to transact with.

I'll call you. Stop trying to force yourself on me.

Absolutely. Its also an arms race - if one company advertised like this, maybe they'd get an advantage. But given that everyone does it, they're back to where they started, relative to each other (and also relative to the wider economy!)

Yes. It's spam and needs to be treated as such. And like most spam its full of scams trying to trick you into acting against your own interests.

How could this patent application have any chance of being accepted? This exact system has been used in mobile games for 15 years at least

Next stop, subscription to stop the ad injection. The stuff is no longer a game or operating system you purchase; it is a marriage certificate that needs permanent financial commitment. Every hardware and software platforms wants to extract monthly fees or inject ads. Growth doesn't mean inventing something new. It is the same old stuff with more fees to pay.

Sony should buy a lot of those ads to advertise the fact that Playstation doesn't do that. They'll get a lot of new customers.

And Microsoft should counter by advertising physical media.

They don't do that, yet. And you still don't own your games. Screw Sony too.

Can we hope that they'll defend this patent, and no one else will be able to abuse their customers in the same way? (More likely the obvious prior art means it's dead in the water, but we can dream).

Thank goodness for SteamOS

Steam is still proprietary software that serves Valve's interests instead of the user's. So far those interests somewhat overlap but there is no guarantee that it will stay that way, especially once Gabe inevitably steps down.

Us: No consumer wants this.

Microsoft: did the user utter some nonsense?

Welcome to Zanzibar

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