A screenshot from the Windows 10 version of Solitaire, taken by my friend @Andrew_Cycle. He captions it: “Our dystopian society is even more nightmarish than any sci-fi author predicted.”
PC Gamer notes that this version of Solitaire — which comes bundled with the OS once more — plays ads that “run over the full Solitaire window, some for 15 second and some for 30 seconds.” There is no way around them, other than to spend money. Granted, Windows 10 is free…but still. Kind of amazing that this is the state of video games in 2015, no?
[Photo: PC Gamer]
Comments
58 responses to “RIP Microsoft Solitaire, 1990-2015”
I hope the virus software can detect this and get it blocked!
Im guessing no ads if offline? (LOL)
That’s how it’s been for me with the Windows 8/8.1 version. Sometimes they don’t even play if am online. Even when they do play, I don’t find them $10 a year worth of annoying.
Or you could just download one of what I’m sure would probably be about a million free solitaire games.
I wouldn’t put it past Microsoft to block you from playing it offline. They’ve already come out and said that you cannot stop Windows 10 from being updated. That tells me that there is something in the nature of a periodic verification check for which you must be connected to the internet, kind of like what they wanted to do with Xbone (until they backflipped)… OMG IT’S HAPPENING!
edit host file, no updates
Oooh, hacking! I like it!
(what’s a host file?)
In laymans terms it’s a local, file based DNS. Your system refers to it, before looking online to resolve IP addresses. You can use it to disable software that phones home, by assigning the addresses you want unreachable as 127.0.0.1.
It can also be used for awesome pranks.
lol, thanks for the info 🙂
Same for Minesweeper. So shitty.
Maybe they should start one of those whitehouse petitions about this, to get Obama to tell them off, haha.
No. Not really. Not at all. Have you missed the whole mobile market of gaming?
I can’t wait for the Ace Of Spades DLC due in early 2016! It’ll include the Spades suit AND introduce Aces! Normally you’d have to pay double for that, but you get them both for only $9.99! Sign me up for that season pass, hell, sign me up for ten!
Mate wait for the ‘Royal Flush’ dlc, where you get EXTRA royalty cards!!!!! 49.99 per suit!
Don’t forget the special edition platinum Joker card, yours for only $19.99
I just hope there aren’t any Day 1 patches needed or server overloads like with the infamous MineSweeper release…
I’m confused – this looks to be very similar to Solitaire in Windows 8 and 8.1 – adds and all. Unless I’m missing something (which I often am) there was no Solitaire bundled with Win 8?
Yeah, apparently it’s the same. It just comes preinstalled whereas it was a separate download on 8.
that’s what I thought. The Solitaire without adds and whatnot really stopped with windows 7.
Huh didn’t know this. Maybe the entire PC Gamer office were still on good old 7 – like me.
Yeah it’s the Solitaire Collection that’s been around since Windows 8. Personally I don’t see why they’d bother putting ads in something this low budget and the subscription is stupid, but they’ve made about a dozen of these games under the premise that they’re free with ads. Mahjong, Jigsaw, Sudoku, Slot machines, Minesweeper/Treasure Hunt. Pretty sure there’s a Bewjeweled in there.
It’s not actually as bad as the article makes it sound. They all have multiple game modes and the ads don’t come up constantly. One ad is too many for me to enjoy the product but they seem to have shown at least a little restraint.
I’m a pretty avid solitaire player (yeah I know, I’m the coolest!) and I’ve been playing this version since I got win 8 a few years ago. I find the adds are pretty unobtrusive – they mostly feature in the online stuff like daily challenges. The thing that annoyed me the most was that it’s a ‘metro’ app so I couldn’t have the window open while I was doing something else too.
Yeah. It certainly didn’t make the game better, and again I don’t know why they’d bother, but it’s not quite the hate crime it sounds like when you describe it on paper. If it were a developer that actually needed the money it would be a pretty fair trade off for a $0 game.
You could! You snap the Solitaire app next to the Desktop app… intuitive I know.
You mean the split screen thing you can do half-and half since 8.1? ‘Cause I that’s poo compared to having a window I can have whatever size I want, even overlapping another.
Yeah, its not great! I just realised the end bit of my original post could read like I was making a slight on you, but actually it was a slight on Windows 8 for how unintuitive it is. I’m looking forward to metro apps getting their own windows in Windows 10!
It’s a bit weird if you’ve got used to Windows 8. I keep trying to close my apps by dragging them under the task bar. I’ve had to fish the XBOX app out like a dozen times today. =S
My mother is a real solitaire junkie. Fortunately she’s long since switched to an free iPad app, otherwise she would go spare over this…
Does MS allow free apps in their app store? I gather they don’t allow free games for Xbox One. I can definitely see a flood of free Solitaire apps coming through…
That is really pathetic.
Time to dust off that actual deck of cards I think
wow… not really sure what to think about this lol.
Solitaire’s gone “F2P”… what is even the fuck?
Wait… “Get a boost for every game of TriPeaks and Pyramid” Oh, it’s Pay2Win, too. Microsoft… what in the name of my Aunt Kathy are you smoking?
Technically Windows has gone F2P; I’m willing to bet they’ll roll out a series of other small charges to unlock a “premium” version of Windows 10 that you can subscribe to down the line.
Ugh… not you, the mental image you’re painting.
You want remote desktop functionality? Add $1.99 per month! System task scheduler? $1.99 per month! Need to access system folder? Unlock lifetime for $50.
$10 to disable the new and returned Clippy.
“Granted, Windows 10 is free” umm no it’s not if you don’t already own a copy of W7 or W8!
What’s it like back there in 2001 Thompson?
Its only free for a limited time. It also consumes the license of Windows 7/8 that you use to upgrade it so technically you have still paid for it at some point.
You’ve got to be shitting me…
FFS all these articles fail to point out it’s just the ‘Daily Challenges’ mode that has ads. The normal game modes DO NOT HAVE ADDS or require any kind of purchase. Everyone get’s worked up over incomplete info. Chill the fuck out, put the pitchforks away, been this way since Win 8 and no one bats an eyelid.
And also that this news is approximately 3 years old.
So it’s early by Kotaku standards.
I wonder if businesses can get solitaire volume licence agreements.
I seem to have accidentally prepared for this: I made a deck of cards based on the virtual one from the original “sol.exe” Solitaire game.
http://imgur.com/a/59Eoa
Really, because the people over at cooper hewitt would say The United States Playing Card Company had made them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
http://shop.cooperhewitt.org/p/3953/evan-roth-solitaire-deck-of-cards
Unless you are Evan Roth, then my apologies
Honestly solitaire would be the least of my concerns after reading microsofts new privacy agreement.
“We will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to”, for example, “protect their customers” or “enforce the terms governing the use of the services”.
Freedom has it’s price.
*Falcon Freedom
And to rub salt in the wound, the ads will often crash the program on my Win8.1 tablet. It sucks.
Only if you have a retail version of 7, 8 or 8.1
I have an MSDN key, so no upgrade for me. I have to shell out minimum $160 if I want Windows 10. I sure hope this shit isn’t present in a paid retail copy.
But didn’t you purchase the MSDN key via reddit for dirt cheap price?
No.. It was from when I was studying IT.
Still cheap enough. My Uni was selling win 7 keys for $10. You can’t really complain tbh :/
I know.
I just hope that this ad supported software is not present in the retail copy honestly.
After a quick Google….
https://computerforumz.wordpress.com/2015/05/12/running-classic-solitaire-on-windows-10/
Basically get a copy of it from WinXP (Not 7) and run the original.
Are there ads if you play offline?
I just use the Solitaire, Spider, MSHearts, Freecell and MInesweeper from Winodws XP. Works on Win 7 8 and 10 no problems.
easily just download windows 7 games collection for windows 8 and it then works for win 10 just a quick google search will yield great success
Back on XP you could play pinball or sol whilst installing the OS.
Too bad your pc can’t go online and download one of literally 100s of freeware versions of solitaire.