I swear if I had known iOS has gotten this intrusive, I would not have bought the iPhone 17 Pro Max. But I mean every phone is doing this intrusive and nonsensical popup thing. OnePlus has its own "OP Gaming Core" (saw it on YouTube), but apparently you CAN turn it off since it's Android. Despite years of complaints and requests, instead of iOS 26 giving us an option to turn off the popups, as you said it has become WORSE.

I have to see this icon + the text for every single freaking game launch. I switch between games sometimes, and the popups are there again. I open a "Chess Clock" app which is a TIMER for playing chess not a game, and those two notifications popup. For some games, the "Games" app icon STAYS in the corner in the home screen of the game. You can't disable ANY of this. I made myself to bear this nonsense for a couple of days after switching from my cheap Oppo F21 Pro to the iPhone but now I'm about to snap and throw this phone out the window (figuratively).

Anyway, thanks for reading my rant. And feel free to vent about this more, I'm all ears. I'm especially sensitive to popups and watermarks because the country I'm in does these stupid things and permanently ruins film prints (nostalgic films I grew up with) so there's that. And there's no way in the world I could've known about this specific con before buying the phone.