I wouldn’t doubt vista had a saved games folder but Vista was a big outlier. File extensions are hidden by default on windows, so most people see logs as text files. It’s easier to see “what’s this random text file?” vs digging through your pc to try and find something you don’t even know what you’re looking for. Again programdata would be fine but it is extremely not obvious to the user because there is no hyperlink to it and it is HIDDEN by default. As a developer if I want the most incompetent users to still be able to find the game files, documents is the only place I have for that. A lot of people don’t even know how to open the C drive.
So first of all the notification for onedrive makes no indication it is backing up all your data, or that it’s installed, or that you should really really look at it. At least in windows 8/10, all it said was “all your files in one place!” And as windows has been known to advertise to the user, most people will think this is just an advertisement, not a warning.
What you are suggesting instead is that the city council builds another lane just in case someone starts driving on the wrong side of the road.
Well in this analogy it’s more like the car has a built in thing that locks me into going straight so I nick the other car trying to turn out of the way, and the only indication I got of this feature from the manufacturer was “your driving can be made much easier!”
To the VAST majority of users? Yes, they are. I can’t remember the last time I had to fiddle with a config file… 2008? Maybe 2010? As for mods - if you’re modding a game, you can spend all of 30 seconds extra to learn where Program Data lives.
Sure it’s pretty rare, but here are some examples I’ve done pretty recently.
Editing starcraft 2 configs to get different shadow and lighting settings for better performance
Editing openmw configs to change some settings that weren’t in the launcher
Changing some settings in sims 3 to prevent a crash
Changing settings back in a game because the game wouldn’t launch after I changed it in game
What are you trying to argue here now? “Microsoft bad” or something more specific?
My entire point is why is a program I never installed or wanted causing issues, which is MUCH worse than something I installed causing the problem. You don’t know what you don’t know, so how would I have any idea what’s causing it’s? Look through every single program I have installed? If I never opened it surely it’s not doing something I never asked for. I don’t care what the things I actually installed do, if I think it’s stupid a game writes to documents, I can just not install that game. If I think it’s stupid onedrive is breaking my games, first I even need to know it’s installed and exists, then I need to know what it’s doing, then I need to know that oh this might be causing the issue, then I need to know how to remove it.
Even that comment you linked said removing onedrive reduced the issue heavily. As another example my friend just this week had a text file he was reading for a python script and onedrive put a random tag on it that made it break his script (which sounds strikingly similar to that sims 3 thread and similar issues I’ve heard and experienced over the years). It’s fine you and people you know never had issues (though maybe you did and your hardware was just good enough to not notice), but just look up onedrive issues with games, it DOES mess with many users files. You can write 100% of these off to user error or a broken install if you want, but WHY do they have to care about this in the first place for a program they never installed or wanted??? Why is it touching their files at all??
I wouldn’t doubt vista had a saved games folder but Vista was a big outlier. File extensions are hidden by default on windows, so most people see logs as text files. It’s easier to see “what’s this random text file?” vs digging through your pc to try and find something you don’t even know what you’re looking for. Again programdata would be fine but it is extremely not obvious to the user because there is no hyperlink to it and it is HIDDEN by default. As a developer if I want the most incompetent users to still be able to find the game files, documents is the only place I have for that. A lot of people don’t even know how to open the C drive.
So first of all the notification for onedrive makes no indication it is backing up all your data, or that it’s installed, or that you should really really look at it. At least in windows 8/10, all it said was “all your files in one place!” And as windows has been known to advertise to the user, most people will think this is just an advertisement, not a warning.
Well in this analogy it’s more like the car has a built in thing that locks me into going straight so I nick the other car trying to turn out of the way, and the only indication I got of this feature from the manufacturer was “your driving can be made much easier!”
Sure it’s pretty rare, but here are some examples I’ve done pretty recently.
Editing starcraft 2 configs to get different shadow and lighting settings for better performance
Editing openmw configs to change some settings that weren’t in the launcher
Changing some settings in sims 3 to prevent a crash
Changing settings back in a game because the game wouldn’t launch after I changed it in game
Even that comment you linked said removing onedrive reduced the issue heavily. As another example my friend just this week had a text file he was reading for a python script and onedrive put a random tag on it that made it break his script (which sounds strikingly similar to that sims 3 thread and similar issues I’ve heard and experienced over the years). It’s fine you and people you know never had issues (though maybe you did and your hardware was just good enough to not notice), but just look up onedrive issues with games, it DOES mess with many users files. You can write 100% of these off to user error or a broken install if you want, but WHY do they have to care about this in the first place for a program they never installed or wanted??? Why is it touching their files at all??