My eyes naturally found Golden Sun in your comment, so I immediately upvoted before I finished reading your thoughts.

Now I’m curious about Urban Rivals and will check it out since I haven’t played browser games since ~2000-2006.

Wow, 7 TB in a month?

Slaps roof of internet router

You can fit a lot of Linux ISOs in that data cap!

Microsoft Edge: “Thank you, Chrome, for sharing the load.”

The sacred texts! Is this why Payless Shoes is no longer around? Because we minimated them?

The ultimate gamer high is to take a deep breath from the Steam Deck exhaust, lick a Switch cartridge, hold your breath, and then chug down a G Fuel.

No prob dude. Ideally I hope they take the idea requests I submitted to heart. It’s a good service but the hostile ad needs to be stopped as it’s not okay.

If they respond to us and make these changes to listen to their communities, I think I’d be more inclined to recommend them.

For now I’ll ride out my subscription and then I’ll return to Mullvad.

The song in this TV spot is a variation of a released song and was made exclusively for the purpose of this TV spot. This version was never released.

The original song is “Still With Me” by Tritonal feat. Cristina Soto.

100% agree with you dude. As customers, we do want to know about sales. But companies need to meet us in the middle. Give us the option to opt out. And in your app, embed a non-annoying advertisement about your sale.

Show a sales banner that does not obstruct the functional UI or take up signficiant real estate. Have a “Deals” or “Offers” button that is animated - wiggle, shake, whatever! That’s the best compromise for the user experience.

Steam has pop ups, but you can opt out of that pop up that shows your Recommendation queue in a carousel you can click through to see different games. I think that’s cool! But I have the option to disable it and so I have done so. If I want to see my recommendations, I can look at the main page and simply click left and right through them to discover new games.

We need Proton to think about the user experience and give us the option to opt out of those things.

Right! I think if I was a free user, yeah I’d be annoyed that I got a huge pop up. But I’d accept that - I’m using a service for free and benefiting from it entirely.

As a paid user if that pop up appears, there better be a tick box right below that ad that gives me the option to tick “Don’t show promotional pop ups again”. And if it is not in the pop up window, I better see a toggle in Settings. If it did exist, I would have been annoyed it popped up but would have been relieved I could disable them in perpetuity. I never would have made this post on Lemmy if that were the case! :)

But they have devs to pay, managers, customer service reps, SRE, infrasture providers, vendors, marketing, etc. Embed a “Sale” banner in the app that doesn’t annoy or take up significant UX space. I want to see an “Offers” or “Sale” button that wiggles/shakes/animated. Things like that are necessary because they need to make money. I’m okay with that! But oof those pop ups - gosh I hate them.

Yep totally. I think that’s the way to go. Granted this is the first time I’m using “Proton” services and also that I’m paying for their VPN. I imagine they send you emails like this to give you a heads up your subscription is expiring.

What you wrote though is exactly what I want to see. It’s a non-annoyance and expected. I do know they have bills to pay and a lot of employees that won’t work for free. So what I would appreciate from their apps are no pop ups. Give me an embedded banner in the app when you have a sale. Make an “Offers” button animated or wiggle/shake to alert the user there is a cool sale going on. I just don’t want pop ups, especially when they take up 30% of my screen real estate. I would not have been mad at all if there was a tick box that said “Don’t show offers again” in that pop up window. I would have said, “cool, I can turn this stupid thing off” and never would have made this post on Lemmy nor engaged Proton support because I would know they consider the experience of their users.

Saving money is always good for me. I’m willing to pay more for an excellent service. When I was younger and money was very tight for me, I went with the cheap crap and dealt with frustrations. I’ll continue to use the VPN service I paid for, and unless it totally blows me away with wonderful features and greater uptime than Mullvad, I most likely will not renew with them. Mullvad worked exceptionally well, but at least a handful of times a week I would get connection errors and would need to switch to a new IP (a minor annoyance).

Thanks! So this wallpaper is embedded in “Wallpaper Engine” from Steam. I don’t have the original, but the artist for these wallpapers is “ITZAH”. Here’s their Steam community workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/id/1tzah/

Edit: I snipped a screenshot of what it looks like. This is not saved in a proper wallpaper desktop resolution since I simply just used a snip of my desktop wallpaper. A formative game from my younger years - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

I hear ya. I’m in a bit of a tricky and conflicted position here because I know obviously companies need to advertise. And Proton switched to the non-profit model in June 2024 and established the Proton Foundation (https://proton.me/blog/proton-non-profit-foundation). I was hoping this announcement would help ease back their aggressive advertising.

They need money, and employees don’t work for free. They have a lot of people to pay. My compromise is if they can limit the ads that turn people off: pop ups and annoyances. If there’s a big sale coming up, I welcome them embedding a banner in their app to say “Hey, check out this offer!”. That’s totally fine with me. If I like a service, I’ll explore it more and pay for it. But once it gets too hostile, I’m immediately turned off and start looking elsewhere.

I saw another user posted about UserVoice, which is linked officially as a Community feedback forum for Proton.

I created this feature request: https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/932836-proton-vpn/suggestions/49046906-add-settings-toggle-to-disable-pop-up-promotional

And while browsing, I also stumbled upon this one created on Oct 14th: https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/932836-proton-vpn/suggestions/48959543-pop-up-notifications-in-the-proton-vpn-application

Thank you so much for voting on the idea! I’m hopefully they’ll consider a good compromise and let us at least have a settings toggle so we can opt out.

By the way bro what kind of name is Tazerface? :D Now I’m in the mood to rewatch Guardians of the Galaxy

Great call! I submitted an idea request.

My submitted idea under a throwaway username:

“Add settings toggle to disable pop up promotional ads from Proton (e.g., Black Friday promo)” - https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/932836-proton-vpn/suggestions/49046906-add-settings-toggle-to-disable-pop-up-promotional

And interestingly I found another user that posted something almost a month ago, too. Looks like I’m not the only one who is concerned about this:

“Pop-up notifications in the Proton VPN application, specifically those promoting Proton Duo” - https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/932836-proton-vpn/suggestions/48959543-pop-up-notifications-in-the-proton-vpn-application#comments

I couldn’t really find the date when the promo ends, but this appears to be the landing site for their black friday promos:

https://proton.me/mail/black-friday

Yeah I mean I guess you’re right. I just don’t like to be angry. I want to get to a point where I can have a more measured reaction and be emotionally more mature when things bother me.

The root cause of the issue is certainly justified of course! I don’t want pop up ads! I said good bye to those things in the Windows XP days. Come on, Proton, what are you doing? Let us opt out

That’s the plan! And my first reaction today when I made that post was anger. After I’ve had breakfast and a coffee and am working (don’t tell my boss I’m on Lemmy), I realise I’m overreacting.

My first response shouldn’t be anger, but it’s just frustrating and I hate ads, especially when I pay for a service.

Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I’m really just disappointed. If this pop up appears once during the Black Friday era - fine, I get it. They want to make money. But I’d rather have a small banner appear in their VPN app or an “Offers/Promo” button. I just don’t want pop ups and I refuse to accept that when their competitor, Mullvad, doesn’t do that.

Sorry, I’m just having a reflective moment and I decided I’d do that in the comment to your comment ha ha. :)

Good point. I’m not sure how to do that I only use Lemmy in the Fediverse, but when I get some downtime I’ll consider looping in their official Mastodon account (I assume this is their official account).

Meanwhile I’ll await eventual response from the Support ticket I filed with them.

“Its advertising you a plan because its a free thing, they just advertised the reduced price of the full version for the product you use for free. Just click it away.”

I’m a Paid subscriber of Proton. Not a free user.