Things Change, Don't They

The gaming industry in a nutshell: Cyberpunk 2077, a game from 2020 with futuristic graphics that would make your bank account cry, running at a buttery 100 FPS with an RTX 5090 (a GPU that probably costs more than your car). Meanwhile, Borderlands 4, allegedly coming out in 2025, will somehow manage to look like it was rendered on a toaster from 2019 and still make your high-end rig struggle to hit 45 FPS. Game optimization is clearly an art form that some developers treat like abstract expressionism – nobody knows what the hell is going on, but we're all supposed to nod and pretend it makes sense.

Vatican City getting new leadership faster than Bethesda releases Elder Scrolls VI. At this rate, we'll have gone through an entire papal conclave, several holy years, and possibly the second coming before gamers get to see Tamriel again. The development cycle is so long that "Skyrim: Extremely Special Edition" will probably be released for smart refrigerators and quantum computers first.

The mummified remains of the last developer who dared to challenge the Linux packaging ecosystem. Flatpak and Steam's unholy marriage has claimed yet another victim trying to make non-Steam games work. For the uninitiated, Flatpak is supposed to be the savior of Linux app distribution—a universal packaging format that works across distros. But try adding non-Steam games to the Flatpak version of Steam and suddenly you're performing digital necromancy with file permissions and sandboxing that would make Dumbledore question his life choices. The corpse in the image? That's just what's left after your 17th attempt at configuring Proton prefixes through three layers of containerization.

Ah, the beautiful marriage of corporate gaslighting and consumer desperation. Jensen Huang's infamous quote about buying more GPUs to "save money" sits right above a retailer thanking customers for making GPU launches "memorable" (read: chaotic scalper-fests with mile-long queues). The cherry on top? Lisa Su from AMD genuinely thanking people for standing in those dystopian lines like it's some kind of heartwarming community event rather than the hunger games of hardware acquisition. Nothing says "we value you" quite like celebrating your customers' suffering while they fight to give you money for artificially scarce products. The tech industry's version of "The beatings will continue until morale improves."

Console gamers are getting absolutely destroyed right now. Xbox raising prices, $80 games becoming the norm, and Nintendo charging $499 for a Mario Kart bundle? Meanwhile, the PC gaming prophet descends from the heavens with his divine message: "Don't worry and come to PC, you can trust me." Sure, you'll need to sell a kidney for a graphics card, but at least you won't be paying $70 for a game that goes on sale for $12 three months later on Steam. The PC Master Race welcomes another batch of console refugees with open, angelic wings.

Ah, the glamorous life of game development! Pour your soul into creating digital worlds for three years, surviving on coffee and dreams, only to be rewarded with angry pre-teens threatening your existence because the latest patch nerfed their favorite weapon. That exhausted character is every indie dev who's ever checked Steam reviews after launch day and discovered their masterpiece has been review-bombed because "loading screens take too long" or "the main character's hair clips through their hat sometimes." The dark circles under those eyes aren't from the character model—they're a feature of the job description!