More bad news has come and gone since my previous update. Recapping the stories with a full blow-by-blow narrative would be redundant, since we’ve already lived and suffered through them. But to summarize, Big AI managed to destroy the entire tech industry in the four months I was away. Since demand for RAM and storage has quadrupled their prices, every electronic device requiring them now costs more than the average mortgage payment. This means everything from laptops to phones to game consoles to cars to web hosting has also skyrocketed in value. Thanks, you dicks.

I am trying to remain optimistic, hoping that one day, these horrendous prices will return to a level approaching sanity. But the paranoid part of me can’t help but wonder if this is the frog in boiling water effect. Are megacorps grooming us to accept something far worse? No more personally owned hardware? Subscriptions to cloud computing services? Widespread mass surveillance?

If the quadrupled tech prices weren’t bad enough, physical video game media will soon utter its final, agonizing death cry. When—if—Grand Theft Auto VI comes out in November, it will ship with a download code in an otherwise empty box. That empty box, by the way, is slated to cost between $80-100, depending on whether you buy the ‘Standard’ or ‘Ultimate’ edition.

This heartwarming update arrived seconds before Sony announced that come January 2028, they will no longer manufacture and ship physical game discs. Here I was, finding reasons to justify the Grand Theft Auto news. “Maybe it makes sense for GTA VI to be download-only, since the size might be too gianthuge to fit on a UHD disc.” But no, two years from now, this will apply to every game, games that don’t have the excuse of being as bloated as GTA VI. Even Bubsy RPG won’t get burned onto a disc anymore.

Worse, Sony announced this in the wake of deleting over 500 digital movies and TV shows from their users’ libraries. This was not content PlayStation owners pirated; they paid for it with money. So Sony has made damned sure to remind you they are not above enforcing that one line in the EULA everybody overlooks. You’ll be buying digital copies from their online store, paying full price, for content that could disappear at any moment.

Gamers, no surprise, were not happy with this news. Within seconds of Sony’s announcement, the memes appeared so fast it was like they generated themselves. The outrage was felt so far and wide, other companies made fun of Sony, too. Kentucky Fried Chicken, of all things, took digs at Sony.

The incendiary nature of this backlash prompted Sony to respond, in so many words: “we don’t care and we’re still going through with it.” They can’t even fake giving a shit anymore. That’s how rich and above ridicule they are.

Now I am no economist. I don’t pretend to be an expert on anything, not even amateur review writing. Time was, when I used to browse Twitter (before Elon bought and ruined it), I ignored the tweets with phrases like, ‘late-stage capitalism.’ I especially scrolled past the ones that paired it with phrases like, ‘mass extinction event.’

But here’s the deal, folks. If there’s any lesson I’ve learned in the past two years, it is this: the richest people on Earth are not your friends. They do not give the slightest smidgen of a fuck about you, even on a microscopic level. And as soon as they discover they don’t need you anymore, they will buy and sell to each other instead of you, passing around a big green “screw you” hot potato. That’s the best summation of what’s happening with these chip manufacturing cartels and AI pushing eldritch horrors.

With all that said, are there any silver linings I could mention? I suppose. I’ve held onto my new job for eight months and counting, although the commute is partly to blame for why updates take so long. I’ve drawn up a writing schedule that could mean more updates in shorter amounts of time. I haven’t put it into practice yet. We’ll see how it goes.

Three new reviews for this round. Check out Billy Madison, Kite, and Vampire Hunter D.