You'll own nothing, and you'll enjoy bending over
You may have heard the phrase "You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy." The origin is from a Danish politician by the name of Ida Auken in 2016. She wrote a speculative essay for the World Economic Forum titled "Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better."Her timeline has been moved ahead it seems. And the third part of her triad has become inverted.
Sony recently said they are going to cease making games on disc. This is a long time coming. Both Microsoft and Sony tried to go fully digital with game releases for their recent consoles, and the public responded by collecting yelling "fuck that." Yet somehow the bean counters at Sony think they can get away with it now.
And, well, they are probably correct. In Japan you can't even find Xbox One games available for sale in stores, so Xbox is already effectively digital only in Japan.
Nintendo did the whole shitty "game key cards" thing with the Switch 2, and people are going along with it. Because, well, what choice do we have? Bigco does shitty anti-consumer stuff, and we have no real way to stop them.
People will say "vote with your dollar" but that is a load of horseshit when it means doing without the latest games ( or the latest whatever for that matter ).
There are a number of bad trends that have led to the inevitable shit future.
Initially I made these a list but I do think more details are valid to share for those of you who have been living under a rock.
TPMs and locked bootloaders
Nearly all modern phones are locked down and you can't run your own software. This was true for the iPhone from day one, and Apple has worked and worked to try to make it harder for you to jailbreak their devices.
It has been true of the majority of Android phones for a decade. For most Android phones now, even if you own the phone outright, you can't even unlock the bootloader.
Even Xiaomi devices have been heading in that direction in that they have been adding an onerous process to unlock your device. By the time you read this they may no longer offer any process.
Which leads to another crappy thing.
Google is restricting sideloading
Recent news is that Google is adding some sort of shitacular bullshit for sideloading apps. Literally nobody sideloading ever wanted this. But here we are.
It's just another step beyond the crap that already existed where apps can call an api to ensure a phone isn't unlocked or altered in any way AND that it wasn't sideloaded. With that API? If it was sideloaded the app won't work.
You could, of course, modify the app to strip out that crap, but that's a huge pain.
Modern consoles don't let you run your own software
EVEN some aimed at tinkerers such as fpga based systems. There was a recent scandal about that... The scandal being an fpga gaming system suddenly decided to prevent anyone from loading an alternate bitstream to the fpga in the name of safety. The community rightly yelled about this and they are allowing it again. But for how long?
Amazon giveth and Amazon taketh away
...all your ebooks, audio books, etc. And they aren't the only ones. They are denying that we bought anything saying buying is not buying. It's ridiculous.
Yeah yeah okay it is only some ebooks and some audio books. But it included 1984. Really fuckers? 1984. Damn. Burn Amazon burn.
Movies movies and shows just aren't available
Many movies and TV shows can't be bought on disc, and aren't available for streaming ANYWHERE. No wonder people turn to piracy. Even more so with huge regional ( cross country ) delays for release.
Steam denies games are "owned"
Steam denies you are buying games and says that they go poof when you die. Dark.
Not only that but I seem to recall them changing their terms ( along with many other companies ) to have small print that says buying is not buying.
You can't buy Office anymore
Microsoft ceased selling Office. Only subscription now. And MANY companies have gone this way.
Yeah sure you can still buy an old version of Office from them. But for how long? It's already 2 years out of date. And it's full price still.
Nevermind that you can't resell Office. First sale doctrine any? Oh yeah... US is a fucking totalitarian regime. Freedom? Nah.
Stop killing games
Game companies force online only and then abandon the online services once they don't feel like maintaining it, effectively killing games. There is a movement around this "Stop killing games". Often it has nothing to do with online play and is just a way for the company to prevent piracy by shifting random game logic into the cloud.
One of the games that started this shit was SimCity. Hackers figured out how to modify the game to work offline anyway, disproving the whole "but it needs online because [bs reasons]".
Forced firmware updates
From day one.
Online only is used to force firmware updates you don't want. I can't play Mario Kart that came with my Switch 2 because I refuse to ever update past the release firmware. It comes "bundled" with not the game but an activation code embedded into the system which I can never use because I will never put the thing online.
Abandoned dead hardware
Hardware is abandonded ( Cricut ) because they tied it to online crap. Happily there was a recent hacker who managed to make a trashed Cricut work again, but this is the exception not the norm. Millions of devices go to the landfill because of such.
Much hardware is also andonded because companies refuse to release the specs and info to create open source drivers. I have a great Roland Quad Capture. Can't use it on recent MacOS because Roland don't want you to keep using it. They could just build the drivers for the newer MacOS, but they have no interest in that. They want you to buy a newer ADC.
The makers argue "it's too difficult to port the driver to the new updates". Bullcrap. Give me the source code to the old driver and I'll do it my damned self you fucking liars.
Those are just the stuff I thought of immediately and could type out in a few minutes. No research, just crap that comes to mind with no effort. That's how bad things are, and they are getting worse.
I could write a whole book on the shit Nintendo has done. Fuck Nintendo. Ending the online stores for their very recent handheld devices that millions of people still own, just so they can force you to rebuy the original Mario for $x for Switch 2 instead of for $1 or something on your old handheld. It's despicable.
You can still download games you bought through their stores... for now. They've said they will end being able to do that as well. If you didn't buy what you wanted though for Wii, Wii U, 3ds, already, well then you are shit out of luck.
Oh wait. No you aren't. You root their shit and pirate, because fuck Nintendo.
But me? I would never. :)
And their war on emulators? Omg. I can't even.
And sadly it isn't just Nintendo that are evil fucks. It's also Sony, Microsoft, Steam... Every single fucking bigco involved in gaming have been doing anti-consumer bullshit for decades. And we will keep buying whatever crap they shovel, because there is no real other choice.
So bend over and get used to the ass fucking. They think you'll like it. And it's the only type of gaming pleasure that will be available going forward.
AI is complaining that I haven't explicitly shared the exact details and arguments supporting the points I've made. I don't have to, because you are an intelligent person and you too have access to AI. If you don't know about it? Just ask AI why I'm making the claims and it will happily explain for you.
Update: I've caved and added a few details.
I can surely come up with more points.
Please trash your old Kindles
No more support for old Kindles. They just flat out can't be used legally any more for new ebooks. Sure you could jailbreak them but for many of them you'd have to take them apart, ground a debug line, and do technical stuff to do so that is a pain.
Right to repair
The whole "Right to repair" movement. There are countless devices ( Apple... ) where they encrypt-lock the fucking parts to the damned device, so even if you get a replacement part it won't work because they want to force you to buy a whole new device. You can include cars, tractors, and many valuable things affected by this sort of nonsense.
Buy games? Nah. "Free to play"
The movement towards "free to play" and microtransactions instead of just selling us the whole fucking game. This killed off several major series of games including Angry Birds. Huge scandal there with them delisting the original games just to shove in the crap pipe new games.
Yeah yeah Angry Birds caved and released a "rewrite" of the original. Only though as an obvious cash grab imo.
Unreal Tournament
There was a whole decade of joy that I had playing those games. Now Epic is a fucking evil monster of free-to-play trash that I don't even find fun. Pay for skins? WTF. I remember downloading shit tons of user made levels for UT. Now... you can pay for the privilege.
Decompilation PC ports
"Hackers" have now ported tons of old N64 games to PC and made them awesome. Nintendo could do this. Do they? Lulz. Do something gamers want? Lulz.
Bambu gives no fucks about license
3d printer makers illegally making open source forks dependent on the cloud then fucking harassing people stripping out their illegal modifications. Bambu. :cough:
Important people have come out ( just yesterday ) and called these fuckers out on continuing to break the AGPL by doing this shit.
3D printing guns is... illegal? Tf
Totalitarian regimes forcing restrictions onto 3d printers such as preventing US protected rights such as the right to manufacture our own firearms. Sure this is a slight tangent from my gaming points but it is all about locked devices and arbitrary restrictions that go against the premise of the objects we bought. We bought a 3d printer. We should be able to 3d print whatever we like. Does your regular 2d printer refuse to print if you attempt to print some text considered illegal? Obviously not. Does it rat out the text you print to the feds? Probably will soon. Now... most printers are secretly embedding an identifier pattern into your print to track you more easily...
Now look, I get that guns are bad. I live in Japan. Guns are illegal here. So it would make sense for Japan to ban it. But not the US, because in the US you can legally buy a smelter, casts, CNCs, etc and make your own weapons. If you can make a fully metal gun, why not a 3d printed one?
Sure there is an argument that people can hide a plastic gun, but... well... so what? They are also dangerous and likely to blow up in your hand.
Even our chats are locked up
Try to download a chat you've had with ChatGPT, where you in theory own the contents of that chat. You... can't. Try to highlight the whole chat and copy it. Can't do that either. Hmm.
Try to export your messages into a clean format from WhatsApp or even Signal. You can't.
Access to your own emails? Lulz
Try to mirror down your email from Protonmail. I have over 80k emails there. It literally breaks if I try. It doesn't even show how many emails I have. They've literally lost many of my emails.
Supporting old stuff? Fuck no
Try to install an old iOS version on your iPhone.
This is really bad because it makes testing software on older iOS versions a royal pain. I know this because I made an entire business around working around this idiocy.
Anonymous chat? Good luck
Try to sign up for a secure messaging system ( that anyone will agree to use with you ) without providing something that can be connected to your real identity.
There are a few where you can actually manage it, but you probably haven't heard of them.
I drifted away from my main point pretty far but for good reason. Things are heavily restricted in a bad way. Companies do everything in their power to force you to buy their new shit and to lock you into their stuff.
This is really bad, and it is only and constantly getting worse.
Thankfully some few people are fighting to continue enabling gaming at least. We have MisterFPGA. We have Analogue products, and now some other companies making fpga based systems.
We have hackers. People like me who will continue reverse engineering systems and software to keep them usable. But we get no thanks. Barely any support.
Support your local hacker. ;)