They were always a thing but I hadn't realised how bad they'd gotten until I had yet again tried playing yet another 'modern' title. It's a combination of legal requirements + corporate + general dickishness when there is literally nothing stopping them from playing it once and being able to check a box to never see that crap again.
But no, I have to wait for the stupid timer on the splashscreen to count down every time and it really demotivates me from even loading the game up because I'm somebody who likes to hop in and out of games while I'm working on other stuff. Then there's the one that I'm quite sympathetic towards other people on and it's the fact you have to constantly keep creating accounts for things even though you're already logging into the spyware they're selling the game on.
I hate it, it reminds me of when you legally buy a movie and you had to click through multiple fucking windows and splash screens which were just ads to play anything and when you downloaded the pirated version it instantly worked. Oh and no big studios I am not epileptic please stop putting a warning up every five fucking seconds when I want to simply launch the damn game.
Edit: I forgot the fucking endless captchas they're now forcing you to do to log in, they don't even code them properly and give you incorrect error messages if something goes wrong the lazy fucks.
They use those to hide them loading all their crap lazy bloatwear libraries loading in the background. It's like how apple loads a screenshot of the desktop first to disguise the load time.
I was just about to type this out. Back in the day splash screens were also loading screens.
The only splash screen I used to enjoy watching was Interplay's old laser etching FMV. That was a really cool screen and it also completely matched the vibe of games like Cyberia.
Video for reference: https://youtu.be/ZG1wP9fSYBs
Now there's a name I haven't heard in decades...
You're right, there's definitely some of that going on, I think it does depend on the game though, I was loading up the Honkai Rail type games out of curiosity you see and even after the splash screens there was still a regular loading screen after. So I think it depends on the studio where they do it as an internal legal requirement or some other bollocks.
One thing I find fascinating about the normies who bitch about loading screens they don't seem to realise what is a loading screen and what isn't. So not to defend Starfield or anything but I remember how many people were bitching about the loading screens as if they were suddenly discovering that's how these games loaded data for the first time. They clearly don't understand that even 'open world' games are loading which is why when you get amateur operations you have the ridiculous popping behaviour going on as the character travels. People who are interested should check it out.
I'd much rather have these days small-mid sized games that load everything up properly than these shitty attempts by devs to try and disguise loading screens which completely fall apart if you don't have an extremely fast system. It's one of the more egregious fake and gay shit that devs get up to.
Give me a fucking loading screen at the beginning of the game if you must but then get rid of anything else after or if they 'must' have the splash screens to do those stupid epileptic warnings let me tick a box at the end that says I've seen it.
Then how do we explain the games where you can skip them?
I say we demand higher standards.