Two-thirty in the morning...
After a trip to the toilet and a half glass of water, Sunset padded back to bed, eyes crusty and mind sleepy. As she climbed back into bed, she picked her phone up off the nightstand and checked her notifications.
Remembering an event going on in one of her mobile games, she unlocked the phone and opened the app, using the load time to clear the crust from her eyes.
Fifteen minutes and several full games of DiceCinco For Amigos later, Sunset yawned and closed the app. Just before she did, one last popup greeted her:
New DiceCinco For Amigos! Available soon in the app store! The game you love, better than ever! Pre-register now!
"Huh," Sunset muttered sleepily. She took a moment to pre-register for the app, then put her phone back on the bedside table and curled up to sleep.
* * * * *
"DiceCinco For Amigos? Seriously?" Rainbow Dash snorted. "You play DiceCinco For Amigos? I mean, it's fun and all to play DiceCinco with friends like, at a sleepover or when the power's out, but the mobile version, you actually spend time on that?"
"It's a fun time killer," Fluttershy said. "I used to play, I collected a bunch of fuzzy animal dice in some events. I only stopped when I had so many games going that I was getting sixty or seventy notifications a day."
"Well, they're upgrading it," Sunset said. "They say they're adding new game modes and new prizes. I'm hoping they'll add Thrice Dice as a game mode. You know, where you play three hands in the same game and it has point multipliers?"
"Ugh, yeah, one game of Thrice Dice takes forever," Rainbow complained. "Well, hope you enjoy your upgraded nerd game!"
Sunset's phone chimed. "Well, here we go," she said. She opened the "NEW DiceCinco" app...
Two minutes later, her left eye twitched, and a hair sprang out of her perfect coiffure. "Wat."
The streamlined, easy-to-read scorecard had been replaced by a kiddified, hard-to-read mess in bright, eye-searing colors. Every time Sunset made a play, no matter how simple, obnoxiously flashing words of encouragement popped up on the screen, complete with a loud, annoying fanfare. When she rolled a five of a kind, an animated braying donkey pulling a wagon of dice ran across the screen—but the animation was so slow and choppy, it took thirty seconds for the donkey to clear the screen, and another ten for the app to unfreeze to let her do anything.
Pinkie Pie leaned over her shoulder. "Wow," she said. "That looks really, really kiddy."
"It didn't used to," Sunset said with a faint whimper. "Why did they go and...and do this?"
Rainbow Dash took a look. "Ouch." She shook her head. "Can't you go back to the old app? I mean, it still works, right?"
"Y-yeah," Sunset said, frowning and closing the app. She opened the old app...
Thank you for playing DiceCinco For Amigos!
Effective immediately, there will be no new events or prizes awarded in this version of the app. We encourage you to install our NEW DiceCinco For Amigos app today to continue enjoying the events and rewards you've come to love from our game!
Sunset twitched. "You have got to be kidding me."
Applejack frowned, scratching her head. "Uhh...looks like th' game itself still works, though. Ah mean, there's all th' games you got goin' with other people, all right there, right?"
"Well, yes, but what's the point?" Sunset cried, throwing up a hand. "I don't play this stupid game to play pointless game after pointless game with random Internet people! I play all those random pointless games to earn free bonus rolls I can use in the events where I can get new dice and stuff! I mean, what other reason is there to keep rolling turn after turn after turn all day long?"
The others blinked. "Umm...because you enjoy it?" Fluttershy offered.
"Well, yeah, I enjoy the game," Sunset said, "but I enjoy it more when there's a reason to keep playing, like...like winning cool new dice, or putting more bling on my player frame, or racking up tournament trophies!" She gestured at her phone in frustration. "And now, I can't do any of that without playing that hideous mess of a new app?" She let out a heavy puff of air. "Besides, the app was just fine the way it was! Why did they go and make a new version? There's no point!"
"So just give it up and find a different game to play?" Twilight suggested.
"I've spent dozens of hours playing DiceCinco!" Sunset cried. "I have over a hundred custom dice sets! I rank in the top three in the weekly challenge every week! I can't just turn my back on all that!"
The others stared at her.
"Wow," Rainbow said. "When do you get anything done?"
Sunset ducked her head. "I...I play when I'm not doing anything, okay? Which isn't that often..."
"Often enough, apparently," Rarity observed with a cocked eyebrow.
Sunset groaned. "Look, the point is, this is bullshit!" She fired up the app store on her phone. "I'm gonna write such an angry review..."
"Yyyeah, good luck with that," Rainbow drawled.
* * * * *
Sunset dully tapped the Roll button again and again, listlessly burning through the 497 turn notifications that had accumulated on her phone in the three days since the DiceCinco app had upgraded. She was barely even paying attention to the scoring; she was going through the motions as she watched a Daring Do movie on TV and read her homework assignment while playing.
It didn't help that every ten turns, a popup would flash onto her screen:
Enjoying DiceCinco? Get new rewards, play new exciting events, and more with the NEW DiceCinco For Amigos! Download it now!
Sunset sighed. She had eighty bonus rolls accumulated—all earned through crafty, savvy gameplay rather than purchased from the app—and they were useless now, because there would be no new events. She had twenty thousand Cincoins, but nothing to buy with them in the Rewards store—which would never again be adding new content, and the new app didn't use Cincoins at all, it used Churro Tokens. She'd checked and found you'd get one Churro Token for every thousand Cincoins you had if you migrated your account, and three Churro Tokens were used per play in the random dice drop game.
"What's the use?" she moaned. With a weary sigh, she opened the new DiceCinco app. She went into the new rewards center and listlessly blew her earned Tokens to collect several bland, uninteresting new sets of dice. For no particular reason, she decided to check the new events.
Ten minutes later found her playing her way through the available new event games. Each roll was met with a flashy animation. Each score was greeted by an obnoxious, noisome pop-up message in big, gaudy gold letters:
Wow!
Awesome!
You Rock!
Great Play!
And whenever she scored a five of a kind, that obnoxious donkey would appear, braying his fool head off as he crossed the screen. She noted that at least he wasn't as laggy as he'd been before. Also, the colors on the new scorecard didn't seem quite as obnoxious and garish as they had before. It still took three times as long to make a single play as it did in the old app, but the longer she played it, the more accustomed she grew to it.
* * * * *
"You seem rather chipper today, darling! Despite the dark circles under your eyes."
Sunset chuckled. "Heh...yeah...I was up all night playing DiceCinco."
Fluttershy tilted her head. "I thought you gave up on it?" she asked.
"Eh," Sunset said. "I decided to give the new app another chance. Still hate it, but I'll get used to it."
"That's good to know," Rainbow said. "By the way, did you download the new Streamflix update?"
That night...
Sunset stared, one eye twitching, at her Streamflix queue.
Which had previously been neatly ordered, arranged by the titles she wanted to watch the most placed at the top, and everything else in alphabetical order.
But after the update, the queue had been shuffled into "Streamflix Suggests" and "Watch It Again", and there was no longer any option to reorganize her queue to her own liking. Worse, anything new she added went right to the top of the list...
Sunset sighed. "Why do they keep 'fixing' apps that aren't broken?" she complained to her empty apartment.
Her DiceCinco notification went off.
You have 779 notifications!
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh..."