this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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It's not like this is a pc only problem, it's only a matter of time before it hits consoles too. If high costs persist I could see a return of arcades and pc gaming cafes.
The current trend being pushed is cloud gaming like Nvidia Now or whatever.
I'm sure that will be nothing but a positive for consumers.
It's honestly pretty cool and vastly less expensive than chasing rare GPUs.
Stage One of Enshittification in action.
It plays into the "you'll own nothing and be happy" trend being pushed all around the economy.
The ultimate goal of the subscription services is to leave us with nothing if we don't bring an ever increasing heap of cash every month. It is also to empower services to ban us for any reason, not even necessarily legal one, taking away everything we considered "ours".
So, while it's nice to have options, one shouldn't negate the other. Sure, cloud gaming is handy when you're on the go, or if you are a very occasional gamer, but it shouldn't become the solution, even if there's a large corporate interest in making it so.
Yeah while technically correct this is also a gross overstatement of the gravity of the situation. You can maintain a perfectly good gaming hobby for your whole entire life without access to anything more powerful than a GTX 660. Access to high end GPUs is entirely elective, and not having access to it doesn't disqualify you from anything important.
From anything important made before like 2018.
New great games do come out, and you can't enjoy many of them on a 660. Also, graphics does matter to many players, as it helps with immersion.
Sure, there are plenty of gems that your 660 will run just fine, but there are plenty others it will not. And unless retro games are your vibe, you'll always be severely limited by hardware.
Then you can't frame it in the same light as "you'll own nothing and be happy", which refers to rent seeking on essential resources.
If you choose to set the bar for "immersive" at the level where high end GPUs are required, that's on you and you're the one enshittifying yourself. More to the point you're just obediently setting your standards exactly where the industry wants them, so that they can extract maximum value from you.
Why you would make such a choice escapes me, but it's not an unfair situation by any means. You can remove your hand from the fire at any moment.
At that rate, we can say computer gaming overall is not essential, so I'd be liberated to touch grass or something.
It's important, though, and it gets shittier by the day. That's reason enough to be concerned. Previously, I could afford building a gaming PC and playing modern games all I like. Now that time has passed and my income has grown, outpacing inflation, I cannot afford it anymore.
I can stream these games, though...and you see where I'm going with this. It's the very same kind of enshittification, and simply ignoring a giant chunk of modern gaming landscape to establish my power through keeping the old hardware is not helpful. I like modern gaming, I could always afford it, and now I don't.
To be clear: I am going to stick to my old hardware. But it's not because I feel empowered: it's because I'm only offered to buy into their greed in one big chunk or step by step. And I don't like my options.
You can buy a 250$ GPU right now that will run all the modern games. You'll have to live without "ULTRA" settings, at a reasonable resolution with a reasonable framerate but you might just live through it. The idea that the GPU shortage forces you to "ignore a giant chunk of modern gaming" is beyond ridiculous, the vast majority of "modern gamers" don't have current gen GPUs. You believe that anything that is not an Nvidia RTX model is only fit to run Pokemon on a Game Boy emulator but that's really not the case.
What's actually happening is not enshittification it's just you, butthurt that the market has evolved and there is now gear that is above your means. Cover your shame when you try to pretend your minor inconveniences are societal problems.
When did it come to GPUs specifically anyway? 660 was there as your example, and so we rolled with it. But if you want - by spending $250 in the 600 series times, I didn't have to settle down for "well, it kinda runs, not on high, but it does". I could go all the way to Ultra. Why not now?
And yes, I'm speaking from experience. Is it bad, or is it not valid? I know plenty of gamers share my sentiment, and it plays into the bigger picture that many more relate to.
At this point I personally need to upgrade my entire PC: CPU, RAM, GPU, motherboard - you name it. Only storage and PSU are still good to go. And I know I'm not alone.
And prices now and prices then are two very different beasts. "Crises" are used to pump the prices up only to never get them down. The current RAM shortage is just one in a long string of such "crises".
Market didn't evolve, it just learned to squeeze ever more money from the gamers - either in hardware or in subscriptions. All in the name of numbers going up, of course.
My problem is not with gear that I cannot afford - I never targeted the enthusiast segment of the market - it's with the fact that the gear from the same price bracket gets ever more expensive generation after generation. Sometimes it is reflected in the MSRP, sometimes it's done more covertly by blaming it on temporary externalities that just happen to persist through the entire market cycle of the product. In any case, it's the users that get screwed.
Well i agree with you generally on enshittification but here we're talking specifically about GeForce Now so of course it's about GPUs. And i'm sorry but nothing is going to work to frame the component shortage as a great injustice wrought upon the gamer community. It's shit, i wish it wasn't so and i'd love to buy me a new config too, but it's also just a minor inconvenience in acessing a luxury for our hobby.
I see.
What worries me is mid-range gear getting into the "luxury" territory. They should either stop pretending and call it enthusiast hardware, sending a signal for game devs to correct their system requirements, or stop being so greedy and get the prices to where they should be. MSRP for mid-range GPUs has always been around $250, it still is, except it's barely ever met in reality and still goes up ahead of inflation.
This is not some unavoidable and unpredictable shortage. Neither was anything before it. Manufacturers are very intentional in not ramping up production because that would hurt their pricing, prompting them to produce more for the same bottom line. Fluctuations in the market are used as golden selling opportunities, users be screwed, and high level of entry enables this behavior through low competition.
As long as this trend continues (and it probably will, because they do come up with new and inventive ways to do "pay up or get left behind" and then claim it's not on them), I call it extortion.
Glad you're ok with living your entire life as a subscription service. Personally, no thank you.
I just used it for like 2 months to play Cyberpunk. It was cool cause i don't usually play demanding games and it allowed me to play this one for 20 bucks, rather than, you know, buying a GPU that would sit idle all year long while i play isometric 2D indie titles.
It highly depends on what you are playing and at which quality. I play Balatro and Silksong, I don't care about cloud gaming.
Yeah same I'm content playing Minecraft on my old ass GPU, but I used GeForce now for like 2 months to play cyberpunk and it was all in all a good experience which cost me very little
I fully believe that cloud gaming will never be able to lower input delay to a point where I'd be willing to use it
I honestly didn't notice anything of the sort. I have pretty beefy fiber connection at home so that may be why.
Playing rhythm or fighting games with any seriousness can't be done with the extra delay. 20ms is enough to spoil it. If you happen to have a good fiber connection and an Nvidia server in your city it's probably fine but that isn't the case for a lot of people. (And I'd rather have more control over the experience anyway)
Oh yeah i don't play this kind of game but as a musician i can see how 20ms could be grating in a rhythmic context.
Xbox game pass was a pretty good deal as well, for a few years.
Is it less good now ? (not trolling i genuinely don't use this kind of service and have no idea how they have evolved over time)
Just in time for the 100 hour a month cap!
Not just consoles, but phones, tablets, smartwatches, smart televisions, anything "smart" really including things like home automation devices, automobiles of all varieties, e-bikes, network routers and other networking equipment.
This has to get solved somehow or it's really going to cripple a ton of industries.
But why would you, the corrupt cartel/cabal of relevant oligarchs, want to solve this?
You're just describing whole sectors of products that can be financed via loans, rented out, made part of some tiered subscription program, something like that.
You will own nothing, and you will be a broke, compliant, debt-slave.
Hypercapitalism -> Technofeudalism.
Enshittify everything.
The problem is that it will impact other businesses as well. If this was just going to impact consumers, that would be one thing, but businesses need fleets of vehicles, fleets of phones, laptops, and network equipment. Suddenly not being able to get those things at all because of a RAM crunch is absolutely a disaster in the making. As much as it seems fun to pretend that all the oligarchs are in it together, they're just as bloodthirsty for each other as they are for us.
I mean, the RAM manufacturers literally have been prosecuted for cartel-like collusion, multiple times, over many years.
I'm not just saying that as a framing device, they literally are a cartel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal
But more generally... yeah, I mean, that could mess up other industries, and also yes, the oligarchs in a cartel do still have power struggles.
We, us, our lives, the economy in general... thats all just the battlefield, the collateral damage, of their power struggles.
I guess you could say this could pretty much be our real world version of some kind of 'first corporate war' from various cyberpunk canons.
Yep, these people have way too much power, and... I guess it remains to be seen if any governmemt will actually do something about that, but I'm prettu sure they basically won't.
Stop putting chips into everything?
I never asked for a ''''''smart'''''' future, and I hate that even a fucking toaster asks for a WiFi.
It won't persist. It's just AI hype and massive upscaling of data centres.
Yeah but it could be a few years. That's a long time to wait.
That seems unlikely. The more likely result is game makers targeting machines that have lower hardware specs then they otherwise would've
I hate everything about destroying pcgaming and pumping the generative AI bubble. But this I'll allow it. We need more arcades in Europe and NA so we stop being ass at "Versus fighting" games.
We also need more local gaming because playing online sucks ass between Kernel Anti-cheat, cheaters and trash tier netcode, playing online competitive is dumb.
Hear, hear, all I see nowadays are those stupid crane games and maaaybe a basketball dunking machine. I nearly cried with joy when I saw a LOTR pinball machine in a bar the other day.