Note to dumbass software companies (I’m looking at you, Blizzard; and maybe Valve, though never had a problem since HL2’s release so many years ago) –

When you release a patch to an application, do _NOT EVER_ disable the application from working ‘until the user gets the patch.’ In the case of a game, sure, if it has a single player component, that has to work. Multiplayer, I could see a case for disabling it if the patch would cause disadvantages. But here I sit, with my new Starcraft 2 game, ready to play the single player component (offline, if it can manage such an incomprehensible thing) … but alas it wants to patch up from 1.0 to 1.0.1 — and the game will not run until I get it. And the patcher is broken, probably due to server clog. Brillant.

Lazyness is a virtue … but stupidity is unforgivable.

This is the same as setting the default action to “yes, please!” when presenting the option “Format your hard drive, destroying all data?”; don’t default to pissing your users off.