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this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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I mean, that's really true of products in general.
I think that there are some real consumer law issues to answer where someone buys a product and then a manufacturer can control the product subsequent to the purchase. Like, say I buy a BMW with the expectation that I am not going to be seeing ads, based on the way it acts at the time that I bought it. At that point, I'm locked into owning that BMW. Then the manufacturer degrades my experience, maybe to the point where I no longer consider the vehicle to be the one I wanted.
Like, what is my remedy here? If the vehicle has OTA updates, I can never know what it's going to be doing down the line, so I can't make an informed decision. Having informed consumers is one of the basic requirements for markets to be efficient.
Maybe I could say "Well, that's just a case of let the buyer beware. We'll rely on reputation...some auto manufacturers will piss off consumers and those will be avoided". But...if someone doesn't buy cars that frequently, that's a long iteration cycle.
I'm actually more concerned about video games. Like, if I'm a publisher, once I sell a video game, I don't normally have more revenue coming in from it. But if I do have the ability to update that video game down the line. And I can update it to go harvesting user data, which turns it into a revenue stream. A lot of video game publishers go defunct on a regular basis or sell IP or whatnot, so there, even the "rely on reputation" route is more questionable.
I too have been getting concerned about video games. There is a lot of trust about installing software with no review, frequent updates, and runs at a system level, particularly for windows users.
Honestly, GNU/Linux isn't better today from a user standpoint. I mean, Linux has the technical subsystems to sandbox software, yes
like, the move to Wayland makes isolating graphical software possible, where X11 imposed major limitations on one's ability to do that. Various containerizing systems exist. But the typical software package distributed via Steam, say, in 2026, can see the filesystem as a whole.
Like, I can hack something up with something like
firejailusing that functionality that may-or-may-not work for a given game on a given system, but that's not a real, universal solution for users. My mother is not going to do that.Mobile OSes at least isolate most apps from most of the filesystem and some sensors, and provide some level of reasonably-accessible transparency into what apps can do. They still have their own issues that annoy me, like software normally being able to phone home with what information it does get. But that's still way more isolation than a user who is playing a video game on GNU/Linux is getting.
Global, always-generally-available connectivity brought us a lot of nice things, but it's also come with a lot of not-so-great things, and some of the not-so-great things is a loss of privacy and a loss of control over the things that we own. :-(
Yeah when I mentioned windows I was think specifically of the anti cheat running at ring 0.
Also, there are a few more hoops to jump through on Linux if the software is expecting a windows environment and you are running it via proton.
But yeah, I considered running all my games in a distrobox session, but quickly realized it's so tied to the host that I would have to try a jail and like you said, the game may not work at all.