It’s even worse than that. The only way to back up save files for games like Animal Crossing, which can represent a ton of playtime, is to pay for their online service. The save games aren’t saved to the cartridge like they were with 3ds and you can’t back up saves locally on the SD card either.

I feel like this was the origin story for the computer in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.

I have wondered if some of the big players interested in AI might decide to buy or recreate (again) something like Reddit so that they just have the data and control it. Google owns Youtube, so they are already managing the liability that comes with moderating a social media platform.

Facebook rebranded to Meta and burned $13 billion on the “metaverse” to stay relevant. So, Facebook doesn’t seem to think that Facebook will be around forever. Reddit does have critical mass, which is an advantage for them. There’s no denying that. But, it’s their advantage to waste by being overly aggressive and greedy, which they seem to be happy to do.

As for Google searches, it might be less that Reddit is so valuable for search and more that Google has become so bad at providing good search results that Reddit became the go between. There’s a lot of very specific knowledge on Reddit, but there’s also a lot of redirects from Reddit comments to outside sources that have the info that a Google search should be able to provide. I don’t know if Google has the will to fix that problem though. If Reddit can “get back to normal” and continue being Google’s sidekick, Google might be happy to return to the status quo. But, once a company like Reddit adopts the policy that “the beatings will continue until morale improves,” it’s hard to imagine how they can get back to “normal.”

That’s a big red flag to me. With the Sims 3, I think someone calculated that it would cost over $75,000 to buy everything for the game because of how they monetized the point store, so they’ve already shown a willingness to go there with monetization. Plus, gamers are much more accepting of micro-transactions these days (mobile games make tons of money) and EA publishes other games with some of the most egregious monetization in the industry (ex. FIFA). I don’t have much hope for Sims 5. I would be so happy to be wrong though. I was really excited about being able to customize furniture and have some kind of co-op play. I guess we will see.

Ironically, I just learned that you can turn off the points store in the Sims 3 game settings. This “free to enter” news inspired me to finally buy the Sims 3 collection in the Steam sale - getting it while the gettin 's good, ya know?