Microsoft patents system to freeze games and inject ads during downtimes

Already becoming standard that if you pause on a streaming platform, the page turns into an ad.

I paused because I wanted to see something on the screen, and now I cannot.

How could this patent application have any chance of being accepted? This exact system has been used in mobile games for 15 years at least

Next stop, subscription to stop the ad injection. The stuff is no longer a game or operating system you purchase; it is a marriage certificate that needs permanent financial commitment. Every hardware and software platforms wants to extract monthly fees or inject ads. Growth doesn't mean inventing something new. It is the same old stuff with more fees to pay.

Thank goodness for SteamOS

Sony should buy a lot of those ads to advertise the fact that Playstation doesn't do that. They'll get a lot of new customers.

Can we hope that they'll defend this patent, and no one else will be able to abuse their customers in the same way? (More likely the obvious prior art means it's dead in the water, but we can dream).

Push based advertising needs to be outlawed. Period. It's one thing if I'm actually looking for something to get your sales funnel, it's completely another to normalize behavior that incents shoehorning advertising into activities completely divorced from the act of searching for businesses to transact with.

I'll call you. Stop trying to force yourself on me.