Useful details, thanks.

I'll just point out that they/we did not have a system like that, but just promises of it from a tech giant. (except of course for whatever they had designed internally up until that time) So even as somebody who doesn't really sell games, I get why people weren't thrilled with the idea of microsoft being the ever-present broker in the transactions.

I specifically remember that their plan was essentially CD Keys. You'd buy a physical game and it would have a code inside, or the discs would have unique identifiers that force linked to your account, or whatever.

So yeah, essentially physical media with a digital license. If you were going to be able to resell your game it was going to have to go through microsoft, or maybe you could lend a friend your disc and that lets them buy their own license for a small discount to play it.

Our lives are filled with things we don't "need" that we are not going to do away with any time soon.

It won't really affect me, but I understand the appeal of a physical artifact servicing as time game's license for those who like to lend, sell, trade, library, etc.

And those same benefits are why the corporations can't wait to do away with it. It's been quite a while since Microsoft tried the same thing and people freaked out enough that they reversed course.

Oh boy, just what we need, corpo-wars to go along with the nation-wars.

It would be nice to see them hurting each other instead of the general populace, but we all know that they do collateral damage to innocents even when weapons aren't involved.

You love to see it.

Unfortunately, with the state of this country I could also see aggressive militarized private security getting more popular around this shit.

That is the most dystopian American-sounding thing I've heard all day, especially considering the source.

In this context I expect that "Economic Freedom" means "unregulated, social darwinist, robber baron playground, law of the jungle laissez-faire capitalism."

I wonder if there's any chance of all the tech speculation helping to fund electrical grid upgrades (including grid scale storage for renewables) that actually benefit regular human society after the bubble pops.

Absolutely. I think many people would actually be surprised at how big regular old goldfish can get in a pond with adequate space, food, and water quality.

On top of being in the carp family, they can actually produce hybrid offspring with carp (koi), though I think those offspring are sterile.

Source: have koi pond. Have given away dozens of chonky goldfish to other pond people.

Yeah! I was already concerned that people's eyes would glaze over and they'd skim the latter 3/4 of my message and miss some important connected dots.

Now we've all been trained to detect and reject AI slop for a couple years, so the whole "here's the whole situation described in a single message" strategy is right out the window.

I even like using em dashes sometimes. :/

At least I don't use emojis in place of bullet points. The more you know. ✨

I thought this same thing.

The cherry on top will be the medical examiner afterward pointing out that he could have been saved if medics took swift action instead of everybody in the room pretending to not notice he was "asleep" again.

The trump administration has determined that it is critical to national security that americans play all new games at medium graphics settings or lower.