Even buying a game digitally from most storefronts doesn’t mean you actually own it. You simply buy a license to play it. Look what happens if your Steam account gets permanently banned for violating their ToS, you’ll lose access to any game you paid for on that account. Same thing with Microsoft or Sony. I think GOG might be an exception to this, where they will never revoke access to the games you previously bought, but I am not 100% sure of their policies.

Regardless, all gamers will never fully embrace subscription purity. There are so many games that require a lot of time to complete, especially so if you’re an adult with lots of responsibilities who can only game here and there. For example, Baldur’s Gate 3 is massive and I’ve owned it since launch. I’ve only gotten to Act 2 with like 60 hours clocked in and I still want to play it to finish. However, if it was on a subscription service, I’d be constantly stressed that it’d be leaving the subscription any day.

And what about classic games (includes new games that become instant classics) I’ll know I’ll always treasure and want to be able to play whenever I’m in the mood? To this day, my wife will randomly bust out Mario 64 or even a more niche game like Fable 2 and just have them be her comfort food for a lazy weekend. Hell, just a few months ago we got our our original Xbox to play some Fuzion Frenzy for nostalgia sake. Can’t do that with subscription models.

Anyway, sorry for the tangent. I just absolutely loathe this crushing pressure by corporations to force our entire economy into being rent based. Every expert economist has been warning us about the dangers of this for at least the last 10+ years, and yet consumers keep blindly marching towards it because it’s “convenient,” totally ignoring the long-term consequences.

What’s wrong with the cable? Good catch on the dial mechanism, didn’t even notice the metallic knob/stopper sitting a few cm into the dial haha

If you aren’t going to California, Hawaii, or Massachusetts

*liberal cities in California.

There’s a loooot of deep, deep red areas of Cali that should be avoided.

Don’t know much about the other states you listed, so I can’t speak on their status.

It needs a mobile app to take off, imo.

Additionally, since it is just one guy (that I’m aware of), I’m not sure how sustainable it is for him. I believe he’s been surviving off some EU grant and donations, but once the grant runs out and donations slow, the server costs for delivering content to tens of thousands of users every day are going to start being pretty rough to handle. Has he explained what his plan is for long term sustainability?

I think this is what so many forget. Mid-2000s reddit was a completely different site than what it is now. Not only because it was much, much smaller back then, but also because the demographic was almost entirely made up of techies/nerds.

It’ll take a long time for Lemmy to compare to present day Reddit in terms of userbase diversity and traffic volume, if it ever does. I personally don’t think it ever will, as most users are content with centralized social media, despite their glaring pitfalls. But, I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

Regardless, I’m happy to find a new community that meets most of what I used Reddit for, even if it’s a bit of a monoculture for the time being.