Everything that grinds our gears about PC gaming in 2025

You know that Family Guy bit where Peter does a local news segment called "What Really Grinds My Gears?" This is basically that, but for computers and videogames.

I'll give you one example up front: when you go to click a button, but the UI finishes loading just before your input registers and the button moves 20 pixels south so you end up hitting a different button that probably does the opposite of what you wanted. I'm getting angry just thinking about it.

We've got more substantial gripes, too. The tech industry keeps telling us that it's on the verge of inventing artificial super intelligence, and yet it can't invent a business model that doesn't involve periods of reckless growth followed by staff cuts. I'm sure they'll do it again whenever their irresponsible promises about AI finally get bodied by reality.

There's so much to gripe about here in 2025, we ended up planning a week-long airing of grievances. Some of our gripes are smaller than others, some you might even call petty, but sometimes you've just got to get it all out, big and small.

This hub will be updated with links to new articles throughout the week. See what's grinding our gears below...

Monday

• Audio driver troubleshooting hell: Why is it still so hard to get things to just work?
• We deserve better than the boring carry capacity systems 90% of RPGs give us
• The 'Compiling Shaders' screen is the worst screen in gaming: here's how to make it suck less
• It's 2025 and my PC still has no idea what audio devices are connected to it

Tuesday

• Search sucks
• Graphics card prices are totally ridiculous and it's creating a barrier to entry that makes me fear for the future of PC gaming
• My speakers automatically go into standby mode and it's driving me mad
• When the quality-of-life update fixes something that annoyed me, after I stop playing the dang game

Wednesday

• Games that try to sneak bots into multiplayer matches are automatically trash
• I hate boss fights and you'll never convince me they're good (because they're not)
• I'm sick to death of PC gaming's endless launchers

Thursday

• The dialogue wheel was the worst thing to happen to RPGs, it's robbed us all for years, and I'm glad it's dying out
• The Fortnitification of every videogame is really starting to grate on me
• I'm so tired of being advertised at, man
• I'm sick of the survival crafting 'Cube' and calling the gamer HOA on all of you

Friday

• It's 2025 and we still can't decide on a universal input for crouching
• It's PC Gamer's Gripes Week and you know what Windows 11 is… mostly fine. But it sure ain't perfect
• My new laptop chip has an 'AI' processor in it, and it's a complete waste of space
• It's 2025 and saving in absolutely every game still sucks