this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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From anything important made before like 2018.
New great games do come out, and you can't enjoy many of them on a 660. Also, graphics does matter to many players, as it helps with immersion.
Sure, there are plenty of gems that your 660 will run just fine, but there are plenty others it will not. And unless retro games are your vibe, you'll always be severely limited by hardware.
Then you can't frame it in the same light as "you'll own nothing and be happy", which refers to rent seeking on essential resources.
If you choose to set the bar for "immersive" at the level where high end GPUs are required, that's on you and you're the one enshittifying yourself. More to the point you're just obediently setting your standards exactly where the industry wants them, so that they can extract maximum value from you.
Why you would make such a choice escapes me, but it's not an unfair situation by any means. You can remove your hand from the fire at any moment.
At that rate, we can say computer gaming overall is not essential, so I'd be liberated to touch grass or something.
It's important, though, and it gets shittier by the day. That's reason enough to be concerned. Previously, I could afford building a gaming PC and playing modern games all I like. Now that time has passed and my income has grown, outpacing inflation, I cannot afford it anymore.
I can stream these games, though...and you see where I'm going with this. It's the very same kind of enshittification, and simply ignoring a giant chunk of modern gaming landscape to establish my power through keeping the old hardware is not helpful. I like modern gaming, I could always afford it, and now I don't.
To be clear: I am going to stick to my old hardware. But it's not because I feel empowered: it's because I'm only offered to buy into their greed in one big chunk or step by step. And I don't like my options.
You can buy a 250$ GPU right now that will run all the modern games. You'll have to live without "ULTRA" settings, at a reasonable resolution with a reasonable framerate but you might just live through it. The idea that the GPU shortage forces you to "ignore a giant chunk of modern gaming" is beyond ridiculous, the vast majority of "modern gamers" don't have current gen GPUs. You believe that anything that is not an Nvidia RTX model is only fit to run Pokemon on a Game Boy emulator but that's really not the case.
What's actually happening is not enshittification it's just you, butthurt that the market has evolved and there is now gear that is above your means. Cover your shame when you try to pretend your minor inconveniences are societal problems.
When did it come to GPUs specifically anyway? 660 was there as your example, and so we rolled with it. But if you want - by spending $250 in the 600 series times, I didn't have to settle down for "well, it kinda runs, not on high, but it does". I could go all the way to Ultra. Why not now?
And yes, I'm speaking from experience. Is it bad, or is it not valid? I know plenty of gamers share my sentiment, and it plays into the bigger picture that many more relate to.
At this point I personally need to upgrade my entire PC: CPU, RAM, GPU, motherboard - you name it. Only storage and PSU are still good to go. And I know I'm not alone.
And prices now and prices then are two very different beasts. "Crises" are used to pump the prices up only to never get them down. The current RAM shortage is just one in a long string of such "crises".
Market didn't evolve, it just learned to squeeze ever more money from the gamers - either in hardware or in subscriptions. All in the name of numbers going up, of course.
My problem is not with gear that I cannot afford - I never targeted the enthusiast segment of the market - it's with the fact that the gear from the same price bracket gets ever more expensive generation after generation. Sometimes it is reflected in the MSRP, sometimes it's done more covertly by blaming it on temporary externalities that just happen to persist through the entire market cycle of the product. In any case, it's the users that get screwed.
Well i agree with you generally on enshittification but here we're talking specifically about GeForce Now so of course it's about GPUs. And i'm sorry but nothing is going to work to frame the component shortage as a great injustice wrought upon the gamer community. It's shit, i wish it wasn't so and i'd love to buy me a new config too, but it's also just a minor inconvenience in acessing a luxury for our hobby.
I see.
What worries me is mid-range gear getting into the "luxury" territory. They should either stop pretending and call it enthusiast hardware, sending a signal for game devs to correct their system requirements, or stop being so greedy and get the prices to where they should be. MSRP for mid-range GPUs has always been around $250, it still is, except it's barely ever met in reality and still goes up ahead of inflation.
This is not some unavoidable and unpredictable shortage. Neither was anything before it. Manufacturers are very intentional in not ramping up production because that would hurt their pricing, prompting them to produce more for the same bottom line. Fluctuations in the market are used as golden selling opportunities, users be screwed, and high level of entry enables this behavior through low competition.
As long as this trend continues (and it probably will, because they do come up with new and inventive ways to do "pay up or get left behind" and then claim it's not on them), I call it extortion.