“Oh thank you, based Microsoft,” he whispered.
It started, as these things often do, with a moment of pure, unbridled frustration. Liam was twelve seconds into the final boss fight of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree . His Mimic Tear was at half health, the boss’s health bar was a sliver of sickly gold, and his heart was a drum solo against his ribs.
“Reinstall the Game Bar. Or… and hear me out… install Arch.” get an app to open this ms-gamingoverlay link
He restarted. The PC cycled through its startup chime. He logged in. Desktop. Deep breath. Win+G.
“Yes,” he breathed.
“Worse,” Liam said, his voice hollow. “Windows happened.”
He explained. The dialog box. The link. The failed boss fight. Sasha, who dual-booted Linux and lived to evangelize it, was predictably unhelpful. “Oh thank you, based Microsoft,” he whispered
A split-second press of the wrong button, and the game vanished. In its place, the sterile, blue-tinted void of his desktop stared back. Worse, a small, jarring dialog box had materialized in the center of the screen:
