In the last 22 years the per game production cost has gone down. Back then games were largely physical and had a huge distribution network. You had the cost of putting the game on a disk or a cartridge or whatever physical medium, then you had the logistics cost to distribute it and finally the store selling you the game put their own marginal to justify keeping it on shelf. That was also what kept the indie scene from springing into existence because getting your game released was a massive undertaking. And you had to test test test because patching games post-launch was a pain in the ass. Now physical media is largely streamlined and the focus is shifting more on digital (because it gives better margins). Development tools have also improved and day 1 patches are the norm, all of which bring down development costs. So you can't really compare the cost of a game from 20-25 years ago to the cost of a game from today because the industry has matured massively in that period.

And the industry has been complaining about game development being on the verge of collapse for around 15 years. I made the argument back then and that argument has largely stayed true for most of that period. The argument is that if making games is so unsustainable we should see a reduction of scope. Instead of throwing every bog-standard AAA feature into a bloated AAA game we should see games with a more focused vision and minimal bloat. It's only in the last few years that we've seen studios try to cut the bloat. So I believe gaming right now has reached a point where it's unsustainable for AAA but in previous years I'd argue it was just fearmongering to justify squeezing out more money. But it doesn't mean the price increase is justified. Indie games and games made by private companies prove that the price increase isn't necessary. The best game of 2025, Clair Obscur, was $50. One of the best games of 2024, Balatro, was $15. The best game of 2023, Baldurs Gate 3, was $60. None of those games were made by a publicly traded company. It's the publicly traded company mindset that necessitates the price increase because you need to spend every penny you get and your returns need to grow with every release so you could get more money to spend which then means you need to make even more profits.

I'm not saying the price should stay at $60 for forever, but so far I haven't seen a good reason why it should increase when we can get quality games at that price point or even at a lower price point.

You know, you could take 5 minutes to verify hearsay. From the official source

Launching November 19, 2026, for the PlayStation® 5 computer entertainment systems and Xbox Series X|S games and entertainment systems for $79.99, Grand Theft Auto VI features a single-player experience set in the biggest, most immersive evolution of the series yet.

The Grand Theft Auto VI: Ultimate Edition amplifies this experience with an exclusive collection of premium vehicles, weapons, apparel, and action threaded across all aspects of Jason and Lucia’s story, and will be available for $99.99.

It took me longer to put this comment together than it took me to find that information.

It's less about the country and more that Lukashenko needs to cover his own ass. Daddy Putin can't save him this time so he's trying to appease his people to not get overthrown. But I hope it happens regardless of what Lukashenko does because the people of Belarus deserve better than him.

I'm more amazed he hasn't thrown Isreal under the bus already. He hasn't had an issue with throwing people under the bus before, and yet somehow Israel perseveres despite Iran publicly humiliating him for months.

Makes you wonder what kind of dirt Isreal has on him.

All you're saying is that they should get even more support than they currently have because despite being small they've had a noticeable (and good) impact on American politics.

If you're planning on upgrading why not just build a brand new PC? Since gaming is generally more hardware demanding leave your current PC for work and build a gaming PC. Putting the two together (especially with how you're using it) you're not only increasing the overall hardware demands but you're also increasing the damage of a potential infection. I'm also pretty sure 2080ti isn't going to last you another 10 years. The problem with the 20 series is that it hasn't aged well. If you get everything else top of the line your system will be bottlenecked by the 2080ti. I would build a separate gaming PC and cut the memory demands to buy a beefier GPU. The current PC I'd continue using as a work station.

Buying DDR4 at the current price is a waste of money so if a new PC isn't an option I wouldn't do anything. 32GB should be enough for what you're doing if you weren't trying to run everything at once.

Nah, fuck the DNC. The current failures of the democratic party are specifically because of the DNC. They're more interested in serving corporations than the people who vote for them.

I was going to dispute his bullshit but then I found this gem:

And it would generate in the style of that, all consistent with the artistry, you know, the style, the intent of the artist. And so all of that is done for the artist, so that they can create something that is more beautiful, but still in the style that they want.

Dude is literally saying AI will do a better job at creating art than the artist. Talk about being tone-deaf. The future of artistry isn't a fucking etch a sketch and prompt engineering you fucking donkey.

I haven't read the new TOS but if this review is correct it looks like a GDPR nightmare for them. Good luck to them explaining why they need to collect all that personal data.

So they didn't release all the files, they removed released files related to Trump and they added fake files into the release? That's some next level incompetence.

So when are Americans finally going to start protesting? If you're not going to protest having a child rapist in the office at least protest about the incompetence of the government. The government should do a better job at giving you a believable story to stick your head in the sand.

Excuse me but what the fuck? I can somehow rationalize the US wanting some additional security for their athletes. It's weird but America is weird so whatever. But what part of fucking IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT agency indicates "we do operations on foreign soil"? Considering the level of their training they're probably the biggest threat at the Olympics.

This will never be widely accepted in the gaming space because it's not a game. The model only generates an interactive world, not a game world. It's effectively a glorified AI prompted showroom. It's useless as a development tool because nothing it generates is usable in the traditional development process which means the model would have to create the whole game but the model is incapable of understanding what a game is.

Pretty much. OpenAI will "give" AMD 78bln for 10% of the stock and the chips openAI actually wants. This whole ordeal has been publicly paraded like OpenAI and AMD partnering up, which has already pumped up AMD stock price by 45%. Thus openAI will eventually get their 78bln (which they actually never had in the first place) back in AMD stock.

So who actually pays the 78bln? The simple answer is AMD stock holders, currently the ones who have bought the stock after the announcement and later the ones who bought it before it crashed. The more complex answer is that the stock market at this point is just a speculative mess where numbers are made up because the price isn't dictated by what the company is currently capable of doing but rather what the company potentially could be doing in the future. Who knows who is actually paying for it because AMD stocks will get used elsewhere (for example as collateral in a loan) and the economic growth with absorb the costs. In short, we might as well imagine nobody paid for the chips.

In short, brace for another "once in a lifetime" economic crash.

I wonder if they saw the ad and thought "a Snickers a day will get expensive, we'll give him a banana instead".

Everything about windows is misleading. There are windows settings that require doing some sort of an windows inception where you open one settings to go deeper into an older version of the same settings to go deeper into an even older version of the same settings until you reach something that was designed for Windows 98 and actually works. With every newer windows version the settings become only more and more convoluted. Thank god I've switched to Linux as my daily driver.

I'm starting to believe the average conservative is just that stupid. They can't connect the dots on their own and they can't tell the truth from lies. If you tell them A -> B and B -> C they won't come to A -> C. You have to explicitly show them A -> C for them to see that. And that works only if there's nobody else (like Trump) telling them A can't lead to C.

I can imagine her justifying supporting Trump because Trump said he had nothing to do with the kids stuff. We've known for years but for her all it takes is Trump saying he didn't do it and in her eyes we're wrong.

When I first heard about the firings and the delay to the game I thought "This doesn't sound plausible. Are they really going to ruin their investment and effectively kill the company to supposedly save a quarter of a billion. That would be unbelievably stupid". But with every subsequent nugget of information it's getting increasingly clearer that they, Krafton, actually are unbelievably stupid. They're pretty much guaranteed that if Subnautica 2 gets released (and that's assuming Subnautica 2 is in a good enough position to be released) the studio will shutter as all the talent will move on and all the money Krafton spent acquiring the studio is thrown in the wind. They're not even going to save the quarter billion because the delay means they're going to be paying at least 6 months wages for minimum effort work because I doubt anyone at that studio is willing to put in the effort after being cheated out of their bonus.

Even if it's all so obvious I still find it hard to believe the publisher is THAT stupid. But that's the world we live in, where people get to make idiotic decisions because they're greedy as fuck.

I don't think anyone is questioning whether Ukrainians want the war to end. Of course the majority want the war to end as soon as possible. However, when asked specifically about territorial concessions the majority of Ukrainians are not willing to accept concessions. Source.

Maybe the Ukrainian leadership knows more about what the average Ukrainian wants than you do?

I don't think Sony is discovering anything. They've said the focus this year isn't on console sales but rather the bigger monetization of the existing userbase. They probably thought that since they're not planning on selling a lot of units anyway they might as well ask extra from anyone determined to get one.

Bro, you like imaginary children more than Epstein liked real children?