The Steam Summer Sale came and went in July, and both my wishlist and wallet were ready for it. I picked out multiplayer games for both myself and my friends, bought a few indie games I'd always wanted to try, and even some AAA releases like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and EA Sports FC 25.

While FC 25's Steam Sale price had actually been $14, I got it for INR 200, which amounts to about $2.30. Steal deal? Absolutely, and despite having the game on the Game Pass Ultimate that I share with an Xbox-owning friend, I decided to go ahead and get it. After all, it would be nice to have the full copy of it. Despite that deal, I found myself refunding the game the next night when I first launched it, thanks to the insane hair-pulling frustration EA decided to put me through.

I just wanted to play the game with a friend

No internet connection meant I couldn't play a fully-installed FC 25

Having got FC 25 fresh off the Steam Summer Sale, I was all ready to host a friend who had just moved in nearby. Sure, furniture shopping and the plumbing could wait, but FC 25 on the first weekend in a new city? That was the plan, and it sounded glorious. I downloaded the game, with all its updates ready to go, and disconnected my PC case before driving it a few miles away.

Having reached there, we realized that the Wi-Fi was yet to be set up, which meant we'd be operating offline. No matter — the game's downloaded, after all. I just needed to start it up, right? No. As soon as I hit 'play', the EA launcher refused to turn on. Completely par for the course, and I even got a message saying I can still play my downloaded games, FC 25 chief among them. Sure, let's go. I hit play, and despite the game being downloaded onto my PC, it told me to connect to the internet so it could 'verify the license'. What's the point of buying and downloading a game if I have to prove I bought it, and can't even boot it up?

Sure, I get not being able to play online multiplayer matches, and I didn't plan on it either, but to not even be able to start the game because I'm offline? Insane business. Regardless, that was only a slight annoyance, and a quick Wi-Fi hotspot later, my PC was connected to the internet.

EA decides what controllers I play with

The game refused to turn on until I disconnected my DualShock 4

I'd brought over two controllers to play the game. One, the DualSense from my PlayStation 5, and the other's a DualShock 4 that's still kicking, somehow. Neither of these controllers have ever had a problem, and all we needed was to turn on DS4Windows, connect our controllers, and get going. Sadly, this was my first time realizing that EA doesn't actually allow virtual controller programs on FC 25.

As I stared at the screen, I couldn't help but seethe with frustration. Sure, I'm just trying to get a game going, but why does a game get to decide what controller I'm playing it with? The DualSense worked perfectly fine, but the DS4 posed way too many hoops to jump through. Before you ask, cables were out of the equation. We had one TV on the wall, and that was what the cabinet was connected to, while we sat all the way across the room with the controllers.

Ever tenacious, I figured I'd keep DS4Windows turned off until I got into the game, but of course, the game caught on, and immediately shut down the moment I got to the menu and turned on the virtual controller software in the background. Plus, I can't be blamed for not having a micro-USB cable — I've got only one, and it charged my DualShock 4 completely. I didn't need it, and I shouldn't have needed it.

The problems didn't end there, either

Why did FC 25 make me uninstall a software that wasn't even running?

After the initial frustration with the controllers, I actually had to go back into Steam. I added the newly-installed .exe file for the game as a non-Steam game into the library again. Then, enabling Steam Input in the new executable's settings was my best shot, and spoiler alert — it worked. Smooth sailing from here on out, or so I thought.

The game booted up; no problems. The FC Logo came front and center in all its glory before the application suddenly shut down. The echoes of two men groaning and cursing in a largely empty house can be rather loud, I found. This time around, EA decided to shut the game down because another software it didn't like running — DTLite.

Daemon Tools couldn't harm a fly, and yet, FC 25 took offense to it. I decided to shut down any running processes and then run the game, and to my absolute dismay, the game still refused to play! This was where I almost gave up, and I knew that even if I got the game running, I was still going to refund it. We'd already lost a lot of time, so the 2-hour playtime limit wasn't going to be an issue, thanks to EA's overwhelmingly inexplicable restrictions cutting our playtime nearly in half.

So, I uninstalled Daemon Tools, and hated myself for it — no game should have the right to decide what I do or do not have on my PC, especially if it isn't even running. After this final hurdle, FC 25 booted nicely, with both PlayStation controllers working just fine.

The hurdles were small, but they shouldn't have existed at all

The act of buying a game is supposed to make playing it simpler

Here's my entire problem — the interruptions may have been small and easy to overcome, but the frustration they caused me was completely avoidable. Those problems shouldn't have existed in the first place. First came the age-old problem of having to constantly have an internet connection for games I've downloaded, even when they should, for all intents and purposes, be playable offline.

Then there was the issue with the controllers, which peeved me the most. What controller I have running to play your game is nobody's business but my own, but I had to jump through so many unnecessary hoops just to get a DualShock 4 working. The error with the game still refusing to play because I had an imaging software installed, not running on my PC was, by far, the most egregious crime committed here.

Sure, I realize now, in hindsight, that I could've avoided the whole thing by just having a micro-USB cable ready, but that would still have beaten the whole point of a wireless gaming controller. I may not have paid full price for EA Sports FC 25, but I damn well purchased it, and an hour later, I was hitting the refund button.

These are symptoms of a larger disease

This isn't just about FC 25 or EA, although they could both hear earfuls from my side. It's a symptom of a larger disease in modern gaming. DRM, forced launchers, hardware restrictions, and arbitrary app blacklists? I felt like I was being treated less like an owner and more like a renter — and even then, one who had no respect.

We used to plug in and play, and now, there are licenses to navigate through, permissions to ensure, and software to purge before a game starts. It's only getting worse, but I'm already exhausted. The least I could do was refund the game, but I doubt much would come of a single, lone action such as that.