The Perils of PC Gaming: Uninstall THIS

I’m a simple man. I have simple needs. One of those needs is that when I uninstall a program from my PC, it actually be uninstalled. Apparently, this is too much to ask from a cold and uncaring Universe, or at least from the Universe’s cold and uncaring software developers.

I understand that you might be trying to do me a favor. Maybe I will regret having removed your game from my system, and so you’re trying to “not destroy user data.” Nice try, but no cigar. I realize there may be some ambiguity in this request. So let me try to spell it out. I want you to uninstall your app, and everything associated with it, from the “Program Files” folder. I don’t want you to uninstall all of the files that were originally installed, but leave the save games there. I don’t want you to leave the movies I took of my in-game avatar having sex with a flying monkey lying around. I don’t want you to leave your garbage in my registry. I don’t want you to leave configuration files sitting around.

I don’t want you to delete every file associated with your game, but for you to leave the empty directories in place, for crying out loud. Uninstall. Get everything you brought with you the hell off of my machine. Shoo!

Let’s make a deal: if you want me to be responsible for some set of files, such as savegames, then you have to put them in my “My Documents” folder. But anything that ends up in the Registry, or in Program Files, as a result of running the program? That’s your responsibility.

In the back of my mind is this nagging little question: if you can’t even write an uninistaller without bugs, how in the world can I trust you to have written a reliable game?