Always-online Memes

The ultimate digital irony: Netflix shutting down games forever while the EU waves its "Stop Killing Games" flag in the background. It's the corporate equivalent of saying "I can't hear you over the sound of my profit margins!" This perfectly captures the disconnect between streaming giants and digital preservation. While gamers and regulators beg for ways to preserve online games after servers go offline, Netflix just hits the mute button and keeps serving those sweet, sweet streams. The real punchline? Those "forever offline" games are just lines of code that could totally be preserved—if anyone with power actually cared about digital heritage instead of quarterly earnings. Meanwhile, pirates are in the corner thinking "challenge accepted."

The modern gaming industry's obsession with forcing internet connections for fundamentally offline experiences is indeed a mountain of absurdity. Nothing quite captures the existential dread of installing a single-player game only to discover it needs to phone home to some server for absolutely no logical reason. It's the digital equivalent of needing permission from a stranger to read a book you already own. "Sorry, can't save your progress in this completely offline narrative experience because our authentication servers are down for maintenance." Brilliant design philosophy there.