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.

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

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.

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

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.

If I cant own it, then I cant steal it.

Yar har.

https://batocera.org/

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.

My biggest regret is going with 32 of instead of 64GB of DDR5, when I built a new Ryzen 7000 PC in 2022 to replace my aging 4th gen i5.

But what I don't regret is ignoring everyone telling me not to do all sorts of unspeakable things to snag a $1600 4090 at launch, especially given that it was never sold that cheaply ever again. It's a beast of a card and I'll easily get a decade of gaming out of it. Saw 4090s going for over $3K used on eBay lately, so yeah I'm happy with making what was a dumb decision at the time.

I'd rather play only board games and TRRPGs for the rest of my days.

Imagine paying some rando to rent their computer. You can totally trust them, right? They're not in the Epstein files, right?

If there is no ownership then there is no stealing/pirating by sailing the high seas.

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.

The death of Stadia was so enjoyable for me

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.

The only reason you should ever cloud gaming is building your own cloud, e.g., with Moonlight, Steam Link.

I'm never using a cloud to play games, that's just stupid.

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.

thats why you hack your old consoles and you play games forever free!

I'll stop playing before that happens

Good thing I have a decent Xbox 360 collection so I guess Don Mattrick was right all along.

Meanwhile me playing on linux

RG35xx Pro, Usenet for ROMS

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.

Sorry, to busy going to my local game shop and buying Xbox 360 games. So many games to play

Any noticeable latency and I won't even give something a chance to try it. Needing to send my inputs over the internet, wait for them to get processed, and then have the video output streamed back to my local setup means even a small amount of latency. 40ms (which is what I expect for my connection in online gaming servers) would kill the experience of many games, especially rhythm games or other high-reflex games like the entire fighting game genre. Some stuff like Turn Based RPGs could possibly benefit from cloud gaming for users with underperforming hardware, but that's it. Strong No Thanks F*** Off from me when it comes to cloud gaming.

Dont do it then?

And gamers will still pay for them, apparently.

Reject modernity.

Retvrn to ASCII

That’s the trade-off right there 😅 Convenience is great, but owning your games just hits different when servers go down or licenses change.

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.

You will own nothing and you will be happy. 😀

People who cloud game feed the decline. It's also funny that they end up paying more on the whole while also giving them access to more metrics and personal data on your habits they can profit off of.

This doesn't follow. Even a thin client will have enough RAM to provide more gaming entertainment than you could possibly enjoy in a lifetime.

Good. It should feel bad.

I'll never know that feeling

Okay people are going to hate me for this, but I like cloud gaming when I have it. Play a couple of games I'd never buy and move on with my life. No download times, etc.

If it's a game I want I'll buy it to keep if it does ever go offline or I chose to end my gamepass subscription.

Frankly the only thing that keeps me from using it more is the ridiculous price of game pass these days. It's basically moved me away from Xbox/Microsoft entirely. And that's why after this Xbox one dies I'm not buying from them again.

But without the price gouging, I really like cloud gaming. Truthfully I haven't come across many games that you can't buy a copy for. Some smaller games are digital only and of course the dlc, but this is a decade old issue unrelated to cloud gaming