So we know what's under us. What's under him?

Well, I mean Luigi and Toad are annoying.....

The real issue in the video game industry, especially the AAAs, is that it's producing over priced slop. (Man-made or AI driven, doesn't matter, it's still slop.)

AI only makes that problem worse, and the constant price hikes of recent years, (not just those related to oil / tariffs mind you), have left a lot of the market angry and disillusioned.

WFH and RTO don't mean much here. Either way a good number of developers will suffer under crunch time, a smaller number will never get the promised benefits from it, and it's gotten so bad that even the gamers are complaining about how the developers are being treated by the studios.

Some studios will try to make a good game, but will often run into a problem of expertise or administrative over promising and under delivering. Which then leads to the very common practice and mindset of pushing broken and incomplete products out the door, as "launch day ready." While planning to fix everything in the months to years post release. (At best.) To say nothing about the unhealthy desire within the industry to make everything a live-service game. When the global market, at best, can only make maybe six of those successful ventures at any given time.

If anything demand for a good, fun, game is high. Indie studios have proven this again and again. The problem is that the industry as a whole only wants to make bad, boring, games because those carry the least risk. The unionization efforts are a second order symptom of that, and it isn't really going to effect things all that much. If anything, we can expect the studios to fight this due to a perceived increase in risk, but unless the unions really start taking off, they won't have the leverage to implement the solution: Get rid of the bean counters ruining the industry with their poor decision making, and get back to making good fun games that the market enjoys and is willing to pay for.

And how many people are going to be willing to pay that specialist when they can run the same AI agent and get the same results on their own?

Keep in mind the point of the specialist is a special quality that they have and is considered valuable enough to pay them for their expertise. An AI can replicate all of that at the push of a button. It's just a matter of getting the raw data into it in the first place.

Sure, LLMs may not replace every job, yet. The goal of every industry however is exactly that: Replace every laborer with a made to order digital slave that never says no, and costs far less than any human ever would.

Do they care about the inevitable economic collapse that will result from doing that? No. Their method for dealing with that is absolute surveillance and violent suppression of the former laborers, by the new digital slaves.

You are being far too generous with your outcomes, but that's what happens when all you care about is how something can benefit yourself.

Fair enough. I'm just so used to hearing that excuse, that I assumed it came from the US. My apologies.

That's because they wouldn't gain anything from an increase. The math doesn't work that way, but good luck telling that to an American.

If anything, these across the board percentages are directly effecting prices in countries that don't have these requirements. Because they don't have to give the additional revenue up to the local government, the streaming companies can use those profits to offset the cost of those percentages in the countries that have them. (E.x. Netflix exec: "15% loss to subsidies in Canada? Well I guess the US is about to see a 15% increase in subscription fees to pay Canada's subsidies. I'm not losing my bonus!")

They literally can't.

By making it a percentage of the profits, the streaming services can't recoup the new costs in price hikes. Increasing the price just makes them pay more money.

This is effectively taking 15% of their profits as a new tax in perpetuity. Under threat of sanction / imprisonment / forced shutdown of operations from the government.

To be fair, I'm for such measures when it comes to essential services. (Housing, transportation, governance, etc.) But for cultural promotion projects? If you need to force people to promote / accept your culture, you should be asking why people prefer other cultures and address those issues instead. (This applies to the US too.)

Sadly the masses don't care until it bites them in the ass, and even then they'll only care so long as the suffer consequences for it. (Which is almost never.)

We should be glad they haven't finished brain interfaces, yet. The second they do, they'll all willingly become puppets for anyone as long as they get their convenient in brain browser experience.....

Which anyone can do with a simple request to LetsEncrypt.

I.e. Not much of an impediment for hackers, a major annoyance for anyone who doesn't have a web server ready to go for that purpose.

By putting every infant in the maternity ward in a locked room with hungry cheetahs?

Maybe we shouldn't expose the innocent to harm like that.....

Idiots never stop improving, but can we please educate them and not create more security vulnerabilities that will inevitably end up as front page news?

Oh, you meant nice things for you, damn be everyone else. My bad.

If you're using a web browser to access a serial port, you're doing it wrong from the start.

The whole point of a serial port is that it's a dumb interface with minimal overhead used to talk to external hardware. If you have a fucking web browser available, you can use more advanced (and reliable) communication methods.

To say nothing of the shit show that's going to occur when some idiot leaves their Arduino "project" connected to their box, gets hit with javascript malware while totally not browsing for leisure at work, and their critical automation suddenly fails for the whole company, (and possibly the public), to see.

Which will all come crashing down once enough of them implement it.

In the end someone else has to buy the shit they produce or there's no point in production. With as much consolidation as the US has had in recent decades, the number of viable "someone else" is getting pretty small. Which means you're either going to need a new resource management system, or watch in horror as those you've displaced throw themselves as human bullets at the last crumbling wall of defense you have left.

Ironically, the data centers are probably the worst investment the billionaire class has made in decades. They are giant, immovable, expensive to produce, and easily damaged targets. These aren't T-1000 Terminators, they're to androids and robot arms what cable / satellite companies are to TVs and smartphones. Cut them off and the whole things are more or less useless for their intended purpose.

To those who think that they'll get mowed down trying: You're right, you probably will be, but hunger is a good motivator. As is vengeance, and neither cares for logic or probabilities.

The line used by grifters and swindlers everywhere. Not surprising coming from the regime that claimed it cannot spend money on the public welfare because it has to kill others on the other side of the planet.

So you lazy bastards will be stuck with ADs. Enjoy.

The rest of us will be enjoying an AD-less TV experience. Do we care that you're too lazy to get off your ass for 5 minutes and use that empty space in your head for something useful? Nope. Hell, if anything we're grateful for your laziness. If too many of you lazy bastards start doing it, those AD pushers will try and block it. So you being lazy and suffering through the ADs actually benefits us.