gamers have been screwed for years

I recently talked about deleting accounts to get rid of digital clutter in my life. I've made progress, but out of curiosity, I wanted to know the answer to a question:

Who has it the worst when it comes to having too many online accounts?

Answer: Gamers.

I thought my total number of accounts was pretty bad before I started my deleting. Nope. Gamers have it far worse.

It's so bad for gamers that a video game library manager exists in an attempt to handle it all.

That utility is Playnite, an open source free thing for Windows, although there might be a Linux version soon.

I don't game other than playing little time-waster games while taking a dump, such as on one of those cheap 200+ game handheld things. I'd even be happy with handheld Tetris. Even so, I do recognize gamers having ridiculous numbers of accounts is actually a big problem.

The entire point of Playnite is to have one unified launcher for all your games, regardless of what account the game uses. This literally means you can put all your Steam, Origin, GOG or whatever into this thing and it supposedly works. I do not know that for sure because I've not used it personally.

When I looked all the account types Playnite supports, the list is long. That's good, but it doesn't solve the problem of gamers having way too many accounts.

The funny thing is that I learned about Playnite from a forum thread discussion posted all the way back in 2018. What gamers were saying then is still a problem now, only worse. They were saying it was "normal" to have over 100 active online accounts sprawled out all over the place. Multiple gaming accounts, multiple Gmail and Outlook accounts, multiple accounts for PC control software updates, and all sorts of other ridiculousness.

I had an eyebrow-raising moment when I read over how most gamers manage all their accounts. A notepad. No, I don't mean Windows Notepad. I mean putting pen to paper, physically writing down account info, then putting that in a desk drawer until needed later. And no, I'm not kidding. Enough distrust for the Windows environment existed even back then due to fear of malware and keyloggers to where more than a few came to the conclusion the only way to safeguard account info was to never store that info in Windows.

Did things get any better now that it's 8 years later? No. It's worse now than ever, and gamers are still doing the pen-to-paper thing.

If I were ever to get back into PC gaming, there is absolutely no way I would touch the modern way it's done. Windows 11 is a complete dumpster fire, the cost of PC hardware is too high, and everything "requires" an account.

The way I would do PC gaming is use Linux only, play free open source games only with no ads whatsoever that run smoothly on old low-powered PC hardware, and very purposely avoid "required" accounts like the plague.

And there's also no way I would use a "gaming optimized" Linux distro since those are all trash. The best Linux distros for gaming are ones that support the most hardware while having a lightweight UI. For most people, that means Xubuntu. True, there are environments lighter than XFCE, but with Xubuntu, that's the kind of desktop environment which is light but still friendly. The most important thing to a gamer is getting to the game, so it's best to have an environment that's easy enough to use and stays the hell out of the way during gaming, which XFCE does. It's also important to be able to use your computer like a computer when out of the game, and XFCE is fine for that also.

Gamer account hell begins to end when the rage-quit moment happens

I'm not talking about rage-quitting a game, but rather a rage-quit directly due to account "security" garbage.

Here's how it happens:

Ordinarily, you login to Account on your PC. It's always worked, there's never been a problem, Account is in good standing, and everything is okay.

One day you login to Account using a different browser or maybe your phone. Why? Maybe you wanted to try a different web browser. Maybe you weren't at home and needed to check on something. You had a reason.

This is where you just officially screwed yourself.

Uh oh, Account no longer considers your main PC using the browser you've always used "trusted". From that point forward, you can NEVER login to Account on your PC ever again without extra "verification" steps. Or, you're flat out not allowed to login to the account the way you used to ever again.

What can you do about this? Not a damned thing.

The end result of this is that you have to spend 1 to 2 minutes jumping through hoops just to login to Account. Or worse yet, you aren't allowed to play your game at all. And you paid for it.

A very loud I'M DONE moment happens right then and there. That's the rage-quit. Later on, that will naturally lead to a rage-delete both for the game and the account. If Account slaps you in the face with all sorts of "reverify" crap and/or blocks you from playing the game, oh yes, you will delete it.

Deleting the account immediately solves the problem, because there is absolutely no game worth wasting your life over due to account login issues.

Then you start questioning why you have accounts for any game you have. After all, the rage-quit to rage-delete you just went through could happen for any "account required" game.

And this is when Linux and free open source games start looking very attractive. Neither the OS nor the games have any account required whatsoever. The only time you will ever see anything to do with an account is for a donation link to support the game developer(s). This is perfectly fine because it's a) it's optional, and b) that account has nothing to do with the game itself.

Are we having fun yet?

Gamer account hell will suck the fun right out of any game in the blink of an eye. Regardless of how good the game is, that account... that STUPID ACCOUNT ruins everything the moment it acts up. And it will.

It is no wonder to me at all why there are continued remakes and updates to DOOM, Quake, Ultima VII, Civilization and the like in Linux that you can run right now. Yes, there are newer game titles. But the older remade/updated stuff is fun enough to where it actually attracts young players and not just oldheads.

It is sad that no requirement of an account to play would be considered part of the fun these days, but here we are.

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Published 2026 Jan 4