Always, as long as you have their software installed on your hardware, which you clearly have as you wouldn’t whine about it if you didn’t.
No, I know so, you thinking anything else makes you delusional.
I was waiting for you to pull that old one out. Still defending and shilling for your master. You got some brown stuff on your lips and it aint lipstick. I see you.
Again, with the selective reading and selective comprehension. I have not tested it yet, but look at the solution offered by sp5it. Let’s assume for a sec that sp5it is 100% spot on. It stops the pop-ups dead before they can even arrive. sp5it’s proposal alone negates your statement. Bow down to your masters and keep on shilling.
FYI, I don’t consume alcohol and I don’t smoke, but I see what you did there with that “bud light” reference. I-C-U.
Today, [insert mocking voice] its just a harmless little pop-up that you can click away in less than a sec. [/insert mocking voice]
Fast forward 3-4 years from now. The first D4 expansion is going up for pre-order. One has been out of game for 30-60 days and the launcher hasn’t been executed. At random a pop-up window appears on the desktop with an advert for the expansion. How in the hell…? I didn’t even have the launcher open. The user clicks it away. Two days later after a clean boot and login, the launcher hasn’t been opened yet, but another random pop-up appears on the desktop with an advert for the next Diablo Immortal expansion. The user is visibly annoyed, but quickly clicks it away. Five hours later, another random pop-up appears on the desktop with an advert for the next WoW expansion. What da …?! This is crazy? Is this some sort of a virus?
The user uninstalls the b net launcher and runs a virus scan of their system. No viruses detected. Two months later, the user believes the launcher was removed by the uninstall. The bad joke is on the user. He doesn’t realize that M$ owns Acti-Blizz and has turned the launcher into an app that M$ wants to push onto the desktop that can’t be simply uninstalled via the control panel. A random pop-up appears on the desktop with a message that says “We’ve missed you, you been out of D4 for a while. You are missing out on 60 new items fresh in the D4 shop. Click here to start the installer so you don’t miss out.”
Yeah… according to shill#124875-63-241887101 you have no power. Blizz owns you, your computer, and your life. Comply now before its too late. Today its just 1 pop-up ad, tomorrow its one every week with the launcher open or not. If you think I exaggerating, with D2R you can launch the game direct to play off-line. Try not launching D2R from the launcher for about 60-90 days. You will encounter a notification that says “You have not opened the launcher, for some time, please run the battle net launcher as there could be important updates to Diablo Resurrected.” How long before they require one to launch the launcher periodically in order to play off-line?
Think Don. Think.
2 Likes
You are though. You got plenty of advice in how to bypass the issue on your end, but no, unless the company fixes it on their end it’s not fixed.
No, actually it doesn’t. My argument was literally:
See how that works?
1 Like
It’s funny how some people are able to blow minor issues completely out of proportion.
4 Likes
Same as antivirus software, yet you are using it, aren’t you?
^^^^^ THIS ^^^^^^^
I would also add that the adds are on the level of disgusting in their glaring pop up too regularly.
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The anger is quite proportional as a reaction to the spamming of pop-up ads. There is no guarantee that it will or will not increase sales or entice people to buy their products. I know sales is largely a numbers game and so a wide net is cast. However, that is not an excuse to be hyper aggressive and excessive. Let Blizz make their money. I’m not against it. I don’t want the product but others like it. I’m ok with that. If their ad blitz wasn’t excessive, stayed within the application window, and did not impede my ability to launch games, this thread would not exist. Once they start on this path of hyper aggressive pop-up adverts, it will only get more aggressive and egregious with time. Again, silence, the absence of push back, and small cadre of forum/media shills amount to a permission slip to continue this behavior. Hells to the NO I am not on board with this. Others might accept this on their PC, but I’m not one of them.
- A simple, clearly labeled opt-out, 1 time, 1 click mechanism, to halt repeatedly shoving the same pop-up ad at me. The storage of opt-out data resides on their servers so that one does not have to opt-out across multiple devices (PC, Mac, tablet, phone).
- The 1 click opt-out mechanism can be on a per game basis. I’m ok with that.
- If there will be a steady stream of pop-up ads tied to some product release schedule (new seasons, new stock in the D4 cosmetic shop, etc), provide a one-click opt-out of all, if one does not own the product. I don’t own D4 so I do NOT want info. on the D4 shop changes/updates/new editions/battle passes/sales. No thank you. Not interested.
A much simpler solution that does not hurt their sales or their bottom line, and still gets their message across, is to NOT use pop-up ads at all. Home screen and per game ad rotator ads are plenty. I see the ads. I don’t click the ads because I’m not interested. Blizz knows where my interest are. I make it plain.
This makes no sense. Anti-virus software is locked into a never ending game of cat and mouse. People use anti-virus software as a form of delegation. They delegate the fight to a 3rd party company so that they don’t have to battle with possible serious threads to their data, equipment, and their time. The launcher was? considered a safe application that enjoys the full execution privilege of your Windows account and full use of the Windows API. The launcher can inspect your hosts file, walk through your registry, walk through your drives/folders/files. We as the consume are granting Blizz a degree of trust. So, there isn’t much of a point to engage in an on-going antagonistic relationship (cat and mouse game), when the other party still has access to your stuff, and has a paid team that can work against you. As I said if you move to counter their ads with hosts file, they can read it and make adjustments to circumvent your work. This a cycle of escalating hostilities in a cold war scenario aka an arms race. There are better ways of handling this. It starts with knowing that the trust, that was granted, was tramped upon, and working to not continue violating/abusing that trust.
I make it plain, and in some cases loud, what and where the lines are in my relationship with Blizz. I have no reservations against posting praise or criticism of Blizz. Its not hard for me to not buy their products. Blizz can make easy, small adjustments and still make a billion $$$.
@Kargon:
You got reading above to do. I’m not going to type out chapter and verse of how the player community, over time, caused Blizz to change/alter their behavior; especially, since you suffer from selective reading and selective comprehension. I will give you a bread crumb to get you started. Google and youtube search War3 Refunded.
[insert yoda voice] Powerless am I not. You must unlearn what you have learned. [/insert yoda voice]
I don’t use it with Windows 11. My gaming machine is purely for games and if it somehow gets compromised I just wipe it and start again.
For everything else there’s Linux or macOS. MS Windows is expendable and goes much faster without the bloatware you call “antivirus”.
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Yes, you are. The playerbase as a whole is not, you as an individual, entirely, and this is clearly a “you” problem, not an actual problem.
I’d say "dis"proportional. Don’t get me wrong. I think you have a point in that it is slightly annoying to have these pop-ups when starting battlenet but there is no reason to blow it out of proportion and spend a huge amount of energy on the subject. Stay strong, self assertive, self confident. Don’t let minor issues bring you off course. Stay focused on important things, let minor things go. Don’t be a “Karen” etc. etc.
Chill…
Wish you the best gaming experience.
I don’t get any pop-up ads. Maybe my ad blocker is doing it. Or some other privacy setting vOv.
In any case, I see nothing wrong with the launcher. Especially as it’s visible for less than a minute a day. Not worth having an episode over.
Boom!!!
Somebody queue the evil Dracula laugh.
See post #8. It was the same pop-up ad 3x in a row. This is after reboots after doing updates. It is totally possible that they already slammed the breaks on the pop-up ads thus you don’t get them. Maybe they intended for it to be shown only once, but something went wrong and it showed up 3x. I’ve rebooted 2x (regular 2nd tuesday of the month windows update and an app update. I just fired up the launcher. I get an in-app pseudo pop-up advert within the launcher window for OW2 starter pack. I click the and it goes away. Nothing to complain about here. The ad rotator ads are still there which is fine.
It only takes one spark. You must unlearn what you have learned.
Absolutely.
Is this what you are calling a “pop-up” ad?
It is just a slideshow that changes between 3 pictures.
Click the pause button to make it stop changing or minimize the window. It does not “Pop up”.
If what you are talking about is what is shown below:
I can replicate this easily by deleting my C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Battle.net folder so that the program forgets that I have seen this ad.
If this is what you are talking about then I would try deleting your cache folders related to the battle.net app, and this should fix it. Installing and reinstalling the app does not delete the cache folders.
You need to close the app, and make sure that the Agent.exe is no longer running, then delete these folders:
C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Battle.net
C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Blizzard Entertainment
C:\ProgramData\Battle.net
C:\ProgramData\Blizzard Entertainment
You will need to check “show hidden folders” in the folder options or just type the name of the folder into the explorer address bar and hit enter.
2 Likes
Sure, but that rarely happens on a scale that matter for actual issues, let alone for a slight annoyance as this would be ranked as at most.
No. This morning when I started the Battlenet Launcher there was another window, overlaid over the main page, with an advert for Overwatch Season 5. The usual Launcher adverts (including the slideshow you mention) were inaccessible until the Overwatch advert was closed. Just as a quick test, I’ve closed and re-opened the Launcher a couple of times, and not had the advert again but I’ve not tried a restart of my PC as yet (as I saw this after already having applied Microsoft Hotfixes this morning).
-=[ EDIT ]=-
Aha, you edited just as I was replying. The Overwatch advert was similar to the Diablo IV What’s New thing you’ve just shown a screenshot of.
1 Like
I edited my post. Is what you are seeing shown in the latter part of my post?
Since the team that develops the desktop app is separate from the games’ developers, the app devs aren’t going to see suggestions, feedback, etc here.
The best place would be in the app feedback forums:
Desktop App Feedback
Desktop App Beta Feedback
5 Likes
@sp5it:
Thank you. Thank you.
Now that there has been additional chimes-in into the convo. Let me just add this. I said the following:
With some folks if you piss them off, they will use the resources (ex: technical knowledge) they have available to avoid you, circumvent you, and disengage you, in a stealthy fashion. Employing a filter/redirect via the hosts file is a nice stealthy move. However, adding a filter/redirect via the hosts file puts the stealthy work on full display (see what I said about the Laucher’s level of access to your files/system above). A better and even more stealthy approach is to put the filter/redirect on the router or if you have Raspberry Pi put it there (what a lovely little Linux device). Any filter/redirect of this type could lead to breaking the functionality of the launcher. So, for all those who might want to employ this tactic please be aware.
Thank you again for the wisdom you shared. Now the whole player community has the ability to circumvent and filter out ads from any app/launcher on their devices.
@VitaKaninen:
I followed your steps of removing the folders, but copied them to a safe place. Here is the D4 buy now in-launcher pop-up advert:
https://i.imgur.com/reU3MzZ.jpg
Here is an ad-rotator ad:
https://i.imgur.com/bwRLdkE.jpg
Both exist within the Launcher. The pop-up advert blocks one’s ability to launch a game or interact with the other Launcher window elements until the in the top-right is clicked to dismiss it. Now the pop-up advert does not show up multiple times now. However, as described in post #8 it was showing up multiple times (aka being spammed at the user). I do not mind the ad-rotator ads. I generally pause the ad-rotator so that it doesn’t continue leeching CPU time. I don’t care which ad it lands on when I click the pause button. You are correct. Ad-rotator adds do not pop-up.
I followed your instructions a second time and removed the new cache folders. I then copied the old cache folders back in place and fired up the Launcher. No pop-up advert(s). Maybe there was a glitch and multiple spawns of the pop-up advert was unintended. As stated in a prior post today, I did get the OW2 starter pack pop-up advert but it was only shown once. This is what I think @Meteorblade encountered as well.
Thank you. Do you have a means of contacting the team that handles development for the launcher? If so, did you pass along the info. contained in this thread? Surely, you have a higher level of access than a “plain white text” poster like me.
mmmhmmm… and you have to wonder. Where did all of these circumvent ideas come from? Of the ones that were shared in this thread, who did the posters share the info. with before I made this thread? Who have they shared this info. with since the thread was created? Has the info. been copied to other forum sites, social medias, and chats? Information is like a fast spreading germ. What you count as what does and does not matter, doesn’t necessarily reflect reality because not everyone posts in this forum. Some only lurk.
@Everybody Else:
Fun fact… if you want elementary school kids to learn multiplication, you don’t teach them times tables first. You teach them a “secret method of faster addition and subtraction”. Once they get it, tell them to keep it as a secret. Find ways to discuss the “secret” openly around other kids of the same age who don’t know the secret. Once there is just a little bit of interest in the secret, tell your pupil(s) that you’ve changed your mind and remove the secret status. They will be thrilled that they don’t have to hold this secret inside anymore and will blab it to all of their friends/peers. The “secret” will spread like a virus. You then introduce multiplication tables as the new secret and start the cycle all over again.
It only takes one spark… to create an inferno.
Somebody queue the evil vampire laugh.
Correct.
Deleting the folders resets all the settings, so you will see the ads once more on the first startup, but they should never show up again until Blizzard has another promotion.
Assuming that you left the cache folders removed, this should solve your problem.
I put the original folders back in place and I haven’t gotten the repeat pop-up advert behavior.