Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update

20-25 years ago a handful of companies had a weird hold on me. I’d jump on anything Google made back then. Blizzard could sell me any game they came up with. If it was from Blizzard, it was gonna be great.

Lost all of it obviously. Not a single company has my loyalty anymore.

Except if valve were to release a mystery black box with faint lambda symbol on it. I’d pay whatever they asked for it.

Is it possibly because you were much younger back then and thus likely less jaded? I hear of people even back then who for example hated Microsoft with a burning passion, who were already older, even as today their image has been largely rehabilitated among many young devs.

>their image has been largely rehabilitated among many young devs

Whoa, what? I only hear people complain more about Windows over time.

Lots of people praise VSCode and have neutral to positive opinions about GitHub. I haven't heard any more complaints about Windows than I've been hearing over the past 20 years or so anyway.

I think this is right, but both of those largely escape microsoft branding. I think a better example would be XBox and Windows as a gaming platform (vs macos, though Linux is definitely gaining ground). Windows itself, and especially Teams, have very negative reputations.

Teams, yes, but I don't hear many people having a worse opinion on Windows than the decades before, it seems like it's a vocal minority who care while most people just use Windows and get on with their lives.