For everyone being all fatalistic and the whole ‘there is nothing you can do’ approach. Vote with your wallet. No money for them means no power for them.
We are the customer, not their bitch. If they don’t provide value, they receive none in return. They go broke and someone else will provide the service we all want.
No way the junkies will quit playing early-access AAA titles at any point, no matter the cost.
Exactly this
It’s not the informed customer that is in control.
The sheeple that will shill out money endlessly are the ones in control. The ones buying lootboxes instead of paying their mortgage are the ones in control. The idiots are in control.
Cynic opinion: Once it becomes bad enough the sheeple get punished by the market until they eventually run out of money… the rest of us has most probably a mountain of already bought yet unplayed games at their hard drive.
So there remains a market for that content, just like there is a giant market for free low effort mobile games with micro transactions.
Can still seek out and reward passionate projects that clearly actually care about their output. Those projects may not get the same obscene revenue, but they frequently get a viable amount and consistently get recognition for just how well done they are.
I’m never using a cloud to play games, that’s just stupid.
Meanwhile me playing on linux
IMO the only thing the cloud is useful for in this context is maintaining and syncing saves. Other than that I want my games running locally, thank you.
Imagine paying some rando to rent their computer. You can totally trust them, right? They’re not in the Epstein files, right?
Before we even say what company, I know I’m not betting a single penny that they’re not.
I’ll never do cloud gaming/computing.
If a cloud server becomes the only way to play the newest releases, I’m never playing the newest releases again. That’s fine. There are more games between 1980 and 2025 than I have years of life available to play.
If you can’t build a desktop and must rent an Amazon computing instance, I’m not doing computing anymore. That’s fine, people lived for thousands of years without computers, I don’t need computers to eat.
Playstation Plus was the last streaming service I used. The titles were garbage and so was the quality. I don’t know why I ever bothered when I’ve got thousands of games archived locally. I’ll go back to dumpster diving office PCs before I ever use a virtual instance again.
This is me with everything right now because of AI. There is a thousand of books, music, videogames, comics, movies that are before 2020 that I haven’t read, listen, play and so on.
I don’t need computers to eat.
Yet.
I continue to use GamePass because you can download the games to your console, but if/when they go fully cloud-only, I’m out. That will be the death knell for mainstream consoles for me. I’ll stick to my Steam Deck and modded classic consoles.
That’s not it.
It’s how they’ll:
Charge more for the service whenever they feel like it.
You have to subscribe to each gaming service separately if you want access to their games. Just like Netflix or Prime Video, except there’s no way to sail the high seas for these games as they’ll all be cloud based.
Unbundle your access – you now get unlimited hours for one game or pay more for all games with top tier, pay for every DLC unless you pay for top tier, etc.
Pay for skins, upgrades, mods, your “own” server, the ability to record yourself playing for your social media, voice chat…
Pay for top tier lobbies so you load in faster.
Pay for the best maps.
And of course the service will enshittify. Dropped and slow connections, shittier game quality, glitches and exploits go unpatched, etc.
The ability to exploit and extort gamers is almost endless once they take away our PCs and consoles.
The death of Stadia was so enjoyable for me
There’s more old, retro and indie games out there than you could ever finish. If the situation will get worse people will start sharing install files on offline media like decades ago with movies. Don’t worry, it’s going to be great.
My backlog is so large that it would take forever to get through. I have no need to upgrade my setup to play more modem games.
Some new consoles don’t offer physical media anymore, and some games aren’t able to be played without an Internet connection and a yearly account charge? I just won’t play them, then.
thats why you hack your old consoles and you play games forever free!
I tried cloud gaming briefly and gave up immediately.
Fuck having to wait in a queue to play your games.
I spent more time trying to figure out how to stream from my own gaming PC (to my TV) and it couldn’t do it. How can you make a device that can stream games from a random PC but not one in the same room? Ah purposeful design to prevent that. Fuckers.
If cloud gaming is all that’s available, read books, go for walks, hang out with friends instead. Do what we did before the internet. Do not let them win, stop using it.
I said the same for Amazon (personally ordered 1 item from Amazon, received maybe 5 items from Amazon as gifts, I otherwise do not use them but I am 1 insignificant point well outside the graph) and expect the same results
Certain hobbies just aren’t supported locally anymore. And if they are they’re at ridiculously inflated prices. I always check nearby first but 90% of the time I end up ordering online. Half the time when I do, the place I order from charges 10-15 dollars for shipping, or redirects to Amazon to complete the order anyway.
I put a lot of work in to not using Amazon, and frequently find myself with little else in the way of choice. I fucking hate it.
I feel you there. I have said this from the beginning but everyone said I was overreacting and here we are, and they are in it up to their eyeballs. Even my gf orders a ton from there, thankfully I have few needs and am a bad capitalist
read books, go for walks, hang out with friends instead
Still time to learn.
They can’t understand what you’re saying
You of today can’t help being illiterate today, but you can make it so you don’t stay illiterate. Unless you’re like blind or something, in which case get rekt by us deaf folks
But how will they ready this uplifting message?
Dunno, how they on a text based site?
You wouldn’t be suggesting they’re a damn dirty no good liar, would you? :P
I just have questions…
Do not give in. If you can’t play it on your machine, do not play it. There are other games, and if all else fails, other hobbies that do respect you.
The only reason you should ever cloud gaming is building your own cloud, e.g., with Moonlight, Steam Link.
Im a late 80s early 90s gamer so I don’t know what any of that means
Imagine accessing your own PC remotely from a different machine like tech support does occasionally but instead of fixing stuff you do it to play games. That way you can use your gaming rig in another room or on the go without physically moving it as long as you have fast internet on both ends.
Think: X-Server forwarding over LAN
That’s the trade-off right there 😅 Convenience is great, but owning your games just hits different when servers go down or licenses change.
