Microsoft Solitaire Turns 30 Years Old Today and Still Has 35 Million Monthly Players

Microsoft's Solitaire game is turning 30 years old today. Microsoft is celebrating the occasion with a world record attempt of the most games of Microsoft Solitaire completed in one day. From a report: 35 million people still play Solitaire monthly, according to Microsoft, with more than 100 million hands played daily around the world. Microsoft Solitaire was originally included as part of Windows 3.0 back in 1990, designed specifically to teach users how to use a mouse. Grabbing virtual cards and dropping them in place taught the basics of drag-and-drop in Windows, which we still use today in many parts of the operating system. Microsoft Solitaire, originally known as Windows Solitaire, is one of the most played games in the world as it shipped in every version of Windows for more than two decades. That means it has shipped on more than a billion PCs, and it only stopped being a dedicated part of Windows with the release of Windows 8 in 2012.

Why does Solitaire track statistics

[weilawei]

This is just creepy.

Re:

[amorsen]

It probably doesn't, they probably use the usage statistics that Windows 10 collects. I bet it is a count of how many users have opened the Solitaire app.

Whether that is more or less creepy than Solitaire tracking statistics is up to you to decide.

Re:Why does Solitaire track statistics

[CastrTroy]

Have you played the new solitaire that they have? the one you have to download from the MS app store? It has ads, MicroTransactions, and probably a whole boatload of tracking built in.

Re:

[gosso920]

To some prince in Nigeria, methinks.

Re:

[CastrTroy]

If you click on the X on an ad, they will bring you to a screen so you can pay a fee to get rid of ads. But it's not perpetual, but per month or per year. It also unlocks extra card packs and gives you more coins and challenges.

Re:

[rduke15]

they probably use the usage statistics that Windows 10 collects

So they ignore me, and I'm not in these stats? That hurts... I play Solitaire under wine in Linux, almost every day. And have been copying it to every machine on which I needed to work on for the last 20+ years. Nothing beats Solitaire when you have to wait on some download or some rendering or whatever.

Re:

[John.Banister]

I've been using Aisleriot solitaire directly under Linux. So far, it's done a good job. For reasons unknown to me, I win less often than I used to with MS solitaire, though.

Re:

[rtb61]

Clearly windows anal probe 10 is not just tracking whether or not people are playing solitaire but every single app launched, how long. Do you know the measure of the arrogance of M$, they publicly brag about invading your privacy, as THEIR RIGHT and do not even hesitate about how bad this looks, big ole public fuck you to the public's legal right to privacy. This should warrant an investigation of M$ abuse of public privacy via their operating system.

Re:

[RotateLeftByte]

Why? Because Microsoft wants to charge you for playing it... Anything to get that extra $$$ from you. Scumbags.

I build a lot of Windows 10 computers...

[spywhere]

...and I include the complete set of Windows XP games, with Start menu shortcuts, because I want to play solitaire without logging into anything.

Re:

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Do you just copy the exes over from an XP machine?

Re:I build a lot of Windows 10 computers...

[spywhere]

It needs the .exe files, and cards.dll for the games to function

Re:

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Thanks. It's amazing how many utility apps (not just games) Microsoft removed from all versions of XP, limited to the professional tier of 7 and to subscription only in 10. It's pretty annoying.

Re:I build a lot of Windows 10 computers...

[gbjbaanb]

Winaero has an installer of the old Win7 games [winaero.com] packaged up for Win10.

Re:

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I'm more concerned with the various command line applications, to be honest. A lot of network utilities disappeared between XP and 7, IIRC.

Re:I build a lot of Windows 10 computers...

[argStyopa]

Except that from what I've found, Win10 purges them with big updates.

I think I've reinstalled the XP games patch what, 2x? 3x? And each time after big patches? Gone.

Fuckers.

Re:

[Z80a]

Thank you for your services.

People still play solitaire

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Becuase people still have boring jobs on Windows computers without any other game installed on it.

Re:

[Provocateur]

And word got around that the cards do something when your game ends successfully. Not going to spoil anything, but I will advise against cheating in solitaire

Re:

[bloodhawk]

believe it or not even when people have lots of games installed solitaire is often a favourite. I set up litterally dozens and dozens or card, puzzle and various other sorts of games for my parents, they occasionally try other stuff but 95% of their time it is solitaire.

Re:

[antdude]

For my friends and me, we still old school IRC to play turn-based text games like Uno. ;)

more importantly it was a benchmark

[Anonymous Coward]

In the "old days," seeing how fast the cards bounced after a winning game was a solid indicator of how fast a computer was.

FreeCell

[AndyKron]

Fuck Microsoft Solitaire. Microsoft FreeCell is the ONLY card game worth playing

Re:

[bagofbeans]

Nope. Microsoft Spider.

Re:

[lessSockMorePuppet]

Space Cadet 3D Pinball forever!

Re:

[billyswong]

Yay~ I even copied / installed Pinball into my Linux machine.

Re:

[Dr. Tom]

Seahaven Towers

It has to be done!

[lessSockMorePuppet]

Fuck Microsoft Solitaire. Microsoft FreeCell is the ONLY card game worth playing

Apple is planning their own clone, iNcel.

Windows CE/Mobile PDAs

[thegreatbob]

Got a fresh (made in the last few years) extended battery for a ca. 2003 Dell Axim PDA, and have mostly used it to play solitaire.

remove it !

[speedlaw]

I worked in an office where the boss asked me if I could remove Solitaire, as he would always see the staff playing it. I was the most computer literate in that office at the time. I told him I had no idea how, and I wasn't going to bork the office computers. I could have, easily, but I'm not a dick...

remove it ++

[mikeebbbd]

When it went into the MS Store, game play changed for the worse, plus the ads and such. I just removed it (though it seems to come back with every feature update).

PysolFC is an excellent substitute. https://pysolfc.sourceforge.io... [sourceforge.io]