I Only Wanted To Sign In...

You boot up a game, excited to race some cars. But wait—Microsoft says you need to sign in with your Microsoft account first. Then it wants you to link your Xbox account. Then verify your email. Then accept the new terms of service. Then enable two-factor authentication. Then subscribe to Game Pass. Then link your phone number. Then...

What started as "I just want to play Forza" turns into a full Microsoft 365 ecosystem integration pitch. You're not signing into a game anymore—you're signing your soul over to the Microsoft cloud infrastructure. Next thing you know, you're syncing your gameplay stats to OneDrive and getting Teams notifications about your lap times.

Remember when you could just... play games? Yeah, me neither.