RG35xx Pro, Usenet for ROMS
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.
If I cant own it, then I cant steal it.
Yar har.
Can run on a tiny computer, all your games and saved on local disk, compatible with retro achievements org, save state hotkeys, use basically any USB controller, etc. I use it more than any modern console I’ve bought in years.
If there is no ownership then there is no stealing/pirating by sailing the high seas.
I’ll never know that feeling
Something to be said about ttrpgs and board games with friends and family. Corpos can’t sequester that into a rental only model.
cough Dnd Beyond coughcough*
Despite Hasbro’s best efforts with its pet lifestyle brand lol.
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.
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.
I don’t need computers to eat.
Yet.
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.
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.
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
Go back to old consoles like I’ve been doing. I’m in the process of modding a PS2, and I’ve got a 3DS that is on Pretendo Network and has a fuckload of games installed on an SD card.
Edit: forgot to mention that I also recently threw my old BD burner into an external case. So now I can archive stuff to DVD like we did back in the day. I’ve been really leaning into reviving old tech.
Remember, things got this shitty because most people were fine with Big Tech gradually making things shittier. I look back and realize I’ve been waiting for the One Enormous Dealbreaker for over a decade, but consumers keep moving the red line.
I don’t think it’s just the ignorance of consumers. Big tech knows a lot about how to activate our endorphine centers. Things seem to be great and then gradually enshittify. It’s a bit like the metaphor of the frog in hot water.
Oh, most definitely. They have teams of people with degrees in psychology for this exact purpose.
If you’re only option is to give in to big corpos, then don’t do it. Go replay a classic game, relive a world you haven’t touched in years. Mass effect, dragon age, halo, skyrim, think of all the old games completely playable on a 360 now that you probably haven’t touched in years. Go back to them instead of giving in.
Steam is cool and all but I think I’m going to go with GOG a lot more going forward.
And I’ll never stop buying discs for consoles
I wonder what percentage of disc-based games for this console generation are unplayable without at least a one-time Internet-connected update.
11%-49% depending on platform and qualifiers https://www.doesitplay.org/
Buy your games on GOG and own them forever. You can also buy a cheap, slow as hell external drive and backup your installer files, too. You can still buy games on Steam since most of them don’t have DRM. For now, Steam is also great, but a decade from now they could enshittify.
If you only do console gaming, buy physical cartridges and discs as much as possible. You’ll keep most of the game and can play whenever you want. An example of being able to play “most” of the game applies to games with legacy activation servers, such as Splinter Cell Blacklist and Watch Dogs 1. Most of the game is playable, but anything that requires a connection to that activation servers no longer works.
Finally, scour Craigslist, flea markets, and yard sales to buy old game consoles from before this DRM mess. All those old games still work great. If you buy Wii U, 3DS, and Switch 1, make sure to boot your console and every single game at least once every few years. Yes, every single one of your games. Due to NAND volatility, this will protect your games and console (Wii U) from NAND failure and increase longevity.
Edit: removed Nintendo DS from the list I provided. Nintendo DS does not use NAND; rather, the DS uses mask ROMs which does not have the limitation of NAND volatility.
Wii U, DS, 3DS, and Switch 1
Pretty sure this didn’t apply to DS
Confirmed, my comment above is inaccurate as the Nintendo DS game cartridges do not use NAND; rather, Nintendo DS cartridges use mask ROMs.
Edited my comment above to remove that misinformation. Learned about this stuff years ago and I must have lumped DS into the mix.
And gamers will still pay for them, apparently.
