Reinstalled the OS on my computer yesterday and went to grab a few games. Was expecting to get shafted with that annoying Akamai fun to remove later, but other than that, install goes normal...until all of a sudden, up pops my obnoxious friend Aeria Ignite. Uninstalled it; assumed I'd missed the opt-out during the install process.
Then a little later I went back to grab a few other games, assuming once again that I had just missed the option for an Advanced/custom install. During that process I kept a loose eye on the installer and not only is there no opt-out, but I also observed it's doing a silent install of Aeria Ignite. Seriously?
Typically, silent installs of an unadvertised product included in the download without informing the user are not good ideas. It's not a very good way to increase playerbase trust if they have to worry about not one, but two unwanted, unannounced programs being installed whenever they go to grab a new game. At the very least, clean downloads across the board for all games rather than just a select few (typically player-hosted) and/or a notice of the other software included in the download would be a good idea.
Akamai is at least somewhat conducive to the download process...sometimes...if you really try to look for its positives. Ignite, on the other hand, is not.
Prone to spontaneous disappearances without previous notification.
// It's the music that we choose. //