Like Gabe Newell once said, piracy is a service problem.
The last two things I pirated were No One Lives Forever, a game that's completely delisted on all storefronts, and Ratchet & Clank, because Sony can't figure out how to add the PS2 versions of games to the PS5 and I refuse to stream it (data cap) or lug around my PS3.
Both I would've purchased legally had they not made it a pain in the ass.
Lemmy's creators, who run lemmy.ml, are pro-Russia, pro-China tankies. They're uyghur genocide deniers and have banned people who disagree with their views solely for that.
Especially if you've got a preferred dipping sauce. I'm from Oklahoma, and over here we love ranch dressing. The combination of flavors you can get on and with a pizza is mouthwatering.
I've been playing Asphalt 9 recently, and I've started hitting the walls they throw in after tens of hours in which my options are to hope for lucky draws, wait for timers to reset, and watch ads, or pay.
It's a legitimate shame, because the game is actually super fun, but the horribly predatory monetization is effectively a guarantee that I'm never spending a dime out of spite and I'm gonna quit once I get all the Xbox achievements, which is what I originally gave the game a shot for.
Edit: did I mention that the only ways to get many cars are loot boxes? I can't finish certain sections of the career mode right now because I don't have required vehicles, so it's become a game of juggling the activities I can actually do at any given time.
It's a global solution, not just localized to specific areas. No ads on my account on my Xbox, PS5, Switch, Google Home speakers (YouTube Music), Fire TV Stick, Android TV, Roku, my roommate's Roku, or anyone else's devices anywhere else, in addition to places like my phone and PC where I just use uBlock Origin.
In addition, I'm actually just splitting the family plan across three people, so it's like $7.64/mo, which isn't bad.
Just quickly checking Amazon, a 3060 will run people a little less than $300. Now, if you want the newest hardware, yeah, it's overpriced to hell and back and we've been complaining about it for about half a decade, but a 1060 6GB from 2016 still handles a vast number of games, it's what my wife runs in her build to date. In addition, games tend to cost more digitally on console because there's no competition of storefronts, whereas PC has key and bundle sites plus countless competing storefronts that want your money, or even Epic and GOG that regularly do "please use our service" game giveaways.
Either way though, nobody wants to pay an additional $400 just for the privilege of playing a handful of games. That cost is almost 6 full-priced games alone.
I'm excited for CoD to not be a $70 gamble on whether or not the game is good. Like, 2019 was pretty good, 2020 was great, 2021 was bad, 2022 was bad, 2023 is most likely going to be bad, and 2024 is most likely going to finally be some good CoD again. It'd be real nice if I just had access to this via $15 subscription day one.
And speculative pipe dream hope: Activision has a load of currently unused IPs that I'd love to see Microsoft bring back.
There's the whole "drinking stuff that tastes like trash is manly and 'puts some hair on your chest'" stereotype but bro, I'll take a Seagrams Calypso Colada over something like a beer any day of the week. I want to enjoy the things I'm putting in my body.
I've been told the tutorial sucks, but I do want to say that the PvP seems really good from a competitive standpoint. I don't think there's any RNG, just strategy.
After having watched Sony rest on their laurels for the last entire generation while doing effectively nothing for their platform except releasing new games, I am pushing for competition. The only company who's seriously improved their platform in the last decade has been Microsoft, working on backwards compatibility, accessibility features like copilot and the adaptive controller, a full Chromium-based browser so you can do anything from your taxes to playing Mario 64 in-browser on an Xbox, and easy $20 dev access so that users can install Retroarch and have better backwards compatibility than people who actually own PlayStation and Nintendo consoles.
I want that for other platforms. I own a Switch and PS5 because I feel obligated to in order to play games. I own a Series S because I want one and I consider it a good value.
Like Gabe Newell once said, piracy is a service problem.
The last two things I pirated were No One Lives Forever, a game that's completely delisted on all storefronts, and Ratchet & Clank, because Sony can't figure out how to add the PS2 versions of games to the PS5 and I refuse to stream it (data cap) or lug around my PS3.
Both I would've purchased legally had they not made it a pain in the ass.