A long long time ago in a galaxy far aw- scratch that. Around 10 years ago (back in August 2008) in an obscure Steam group chat, in between gaming sessions, a silly discussion (one of many) took place: "What would be the best way to prank your friends whilst having access to their personal computer?" Responses included "Screenshot their desktop, set it as a background, remove all icons and hide the taskbar!", of course resulting in multiple frustrating attempts to click both the icons on the desktop and the taskbar. Another response was the classic "Cover the bottom of their mouse with a piece of paper!", resulting in harsh mouse movements and checking the mouse cable. A ton of other pranks were suggested, of which most involved either shutting down the computer after x amount of time or messing with desktop shortcuts.
Eventually someone (it is still up for debate whether it was Yarry or Boman) came up with the idea: "Wouldn't it be funny if you could fake operating system updates?" "People would come back to their computer, see that a system update was taking place, and immediately fear that all their hard work had been irreversibly destroyed." And thus, the idea was born. Thanks to unlimited free time (yay teenage years) it did not take a long time before this concept idea became a reality, thanks to the exceptional coding of Vlovsky (update scripts) and Mave (website). However, what did take a longer while to complete was the name and domain "Update Faker". Before the purchase of the domain updatefaker.com in 2018, the Update Faker project was hosted on a free domain extension and was called "Prank Update". Around that time probably only a handful of people knew about its existence and even less people actually used the website to prank other people. Occasionally one of us used the early beta website to prank our classmates -and in some cases even teachers- while at high school. (and you assumed right, most of us did of course get in trouble for it) But most of the time it was more of an inside-joke between the members of our group chat and remained that for many years.
Right now, the website updatefaker.com has been online for a few years and is still going strong. Every time we see the website get linked to on a forum, tech website, reddit, or anywhere else, we are visited by a nostalgic feeling reliving the 2008 Steam group chat days. And even though the old "Steam group chat clan" does not meet up anymore (life just happens one day), seeing this website still being used around the web is a nice reminder of simpler, worry-free times. (because let's be honest: who really enjoys adulthood anyway?)
We recently launched an official blog, which features interesting articles related to Update Faker and computer pranks in general. Expect to see more articles popping up soon by various writers! Besides that, we are always looking for interesting ways and ideas to improve and expand the website. Do not forget you can easily get your own ideas out to us by simply mentioning the hashtag #updatefaker along with your unique suggestion on Twitter.