8 ms·
Gaming is already one of the cheaper hobbies. Going through the hassle of wasting time and nerves to pirate games that are very cheap to get after a few months
by bhaak 4y ago
Gaming is already one of the cheaper hobbies.
Going through the hassle of wasting time and nerves to pirate games that are very cheap to get after a few months after release or in sales is beyond my comprehension.
- mariusmg 4y ago> Gaming is already one of the cheaper hobbies. In the West maybe. To keep up with Playstation example, in my country you can buy 6 new PS5 games with the minimum salary.
- eru 4y agoSingapore is one of the richest countries in the world. Our minimum salary buys you exactly 0 PS5 games. I'm not sure that says much either way.
- homarp 4y agocan you elaborate a bit? https://www.bal.com/bal-news/singapore-minimum-monthly-salary-to-be-increased/ https://www.bal.com/bal-news/singapore-minimum-monthly-salar... says min salary is 3k sgd https://store.playstation.com/en-sg/concept/10000956 https://store.playstation.com/en-sg/concept/10000956 says Gran Turismo is 98 SGD so I am puzzled
- dartharva 4y agoI'm scared to know what you may see as mid-budget hobby if you think gaming is cheap.
- vultour 4y agoSV developers might have slight trouble grasping that 4 hours of their work is someone's monthly salary.
- bhaak 4y agoGetting a console for playing modern games on is a one time cost of $300 to $500. Such a console will be good for several years to come. Getting free games per month or even getting access to a back catalogue of games with Game Pass or Playstation Plus is a monthly $9 to $15. That's less than people pay that smoke.
- FearlessNebula 4y agoNot to mention you can buy a PS3 or Xbox 360 for about $150 on eBay with a bundle that includes dozens of game discs. These consoles are over a decade old but they still hold up fantastically well.
- flatiron 4y agoIt is if you just don’t play current AAA games. I mainly do my gaming on a WiiU. Console and everything cost me $100 used. It plays pretty much every Nintendo game ever made short of the switch titles. Games are very cheap and of high quality.
- imtringued 4y agoA good table saw costs more than a gaming set up and it only does one thing. You will need more than one type of saw. You might need a planer, a drill press, a lathe. The list keeps getting bigger. Or maybe you want to do machining(high end hobby), now you need a garage which will cost you ten thousands of dollars or you rent one for a hundred or maybe four hundred dollars per month. Then you need machines which cost more than 5k dollars and you guessed it, you will require multiple machines like that.
- eurasiantiger 4y agoThere is also an incredible variety of FREE indie games, standalone total conversion mods and whatnot.
- emptyfile 4y agoWait until you hear that some people don't even have indoor plumbing, 24h electricity and enough protein to eat, let alone extra income to waste on children's entertainment.
- b3lvedere 4y agoTitles may suddenly disappear from your favorite libraries. This is usually because of license issues or removing online servers/services.
- Nextgrid 4y agoBuying on disc should prevent that.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- matheusmoreira 4y agoIs there a documented instance of a game being removed from an account's library after being licensed via the online store?
- capableweb 4y agoAll. The. Time. Here is one website keeping track of it happening to various degrees: https://delistedgames.com/ https://delistedgames.com/ Sometimes the game simply disappears from the store front but you can find it in your library. Sometimes it disappears from your library too, and you can request it via some process (https://delistedgames.com/get-your-games-back/ https://delistedgames.com/get-your-games-back/). Sometimes you need to write the company in order to get a new key to whatever platform it is still available. And sometimes it's just lost, with no recourse.
- invalidusernam3 4y agoA bit off topic, but I recently bought my first Xbox (series x) after owning every generation of PlayStation since launch. There were 3 reasons I opted for the Xbox: availability, aesthetics of the device itself (in my opinion the new PS5 is hideous), and most importantly Xbox Game Pass. I am amazed at the number of high quality games on there for a relatively small monthly fee. Buying one new game at full price is the equivalent of around 6 months of game pass. So for the same price I can either have 2 new games a year, or have access to hundreds of games. Subscription services like that make piracy completely redundant. Game pass is spotify for games, and I haven't bought or pirated music since I started using spotify
- FroshKiller 4y agoMicrosoft is much better about backwards compatibility and preservation than Sony, too. I have a library of Xbox and Xbox 360 discs I can just put in my Xbox Series X and still play, often with improvements. I can even still buy many titles from those generations digitally and play them on my Series X. Meanwhile, Sony's missing many landmark titles from two generations, and your only option for playing PS3 games on a PS5 is streaming.
- ErneX 4y agoAFAIK you cannot even use an Xbox for the 1st time without connecting it to the internet. PS on the contrary you can pop a game and it runs offline. But it seems they have been working on removing these constrains which are truly crucial for preservation in the future.
- matheusmoreira 4y agoIndeed... So many PS3 games I missed out on because of Sony's negligence. They used to be better. The PS2 included PS1 hardware inside it. Early versions of the PS3 included PS2 hardware.
- mikepurvis 4y agoAm still salty that the Sly Cooper HD trilogy for PS3 never made it to PS4.
- Ligma123 4y ago>Gaming is already one of the cheaper hobbies I know there are cheaper alternatives, but gaming branded hardware is far from being cheap. Specially middle-high GPUs. And for most people that want to upgrade their computers or a specific item, they prefer to buy something that will last at between 3 to 5 years.
- skhr0680 4y agoJust a decent set of tools for overhauling a bicycle cost me more than my Switch + games.
- Woeps 4y agowait... A stand, chain lube + cleaner, tubes+tube patch kit, chain brush, floor pump, chain drive tool, cable cutter and a set or two of wrenches/screwdrivers cost you more then a 200/300 euro switch plus at least one 60 euro game? And you bought these? You didn't inherit all this stuff from your grandparents together with an "Oma fiets" or two when you born? jokes aside, I do imagine that you might have more specialized tools. specially if you're working with some of the older sport bicycles that need love.
- Closi 4y agoI mean in this thread we are specifically talking about a £389.99 console (new) which has a huge subscription library at a fairly low price. Sure, you can choose to buy a PC... but that's not a requirement (or indeed a preference) for lots of people in the hobby.
- FearlessNebula 4y agoIf we’re talking about PCs you could buy an old office PC on eBay for $150 with a 7th gen Intel CPU and 16 GB of RAM and play a glut of low power games, retro emulators, etc. And if you’re willing to shell out another $150 for a 5 year old GPU you’ll be able to run just about any game, albeit on the lowest settings most of the time.
- squeaky-clean 4y ago
- rowanG077 4y agoI think the same now. But when I was a broke 15 year old I thought different. It was literally pirate or never play this game.
- somecommit 4y agoAbove all, gaming is one of the useless hobbies. I love it so much, yet it's giving so little to self-improvement...
- overcast 4y agoI don't know about useless, certainly keeps your mind and dexterity sharp.
- matheusmoreira 4y agoI learned english and programming because of video games.
- flatiron 4y agoMaybe no shockingly obvious “improvements” but I’ve noticed friends and family who don’t game have a much harder time following the gps while the gamers usually have it on silent and glance every now and then with no issue. I bet there are a lot of mini things like that gaming improves.
- b3lvedere 4y agoEh, it depends. Every hobby has its benefits and its drawbacks. I learned a ton of English, strategy, stress management, shortcut keys, programming and whatnot from games. Some games also took a lot of my sanity, sleep, relationships with living beings, etc. :) Don't feel bad enjoying a hobby. The universe is your playground.
- Shaanie 4y agoLots of hobbies are essentially "useless". The focus on being constantly "productive" seems toxic to me. If you enjoy a hobby then it's not useless, enjoying it is the point of a hobby! So enjoy playing video games, growing houseplants, playing golf or whatever hobbies you have without feeling guilty about not producing as much as you could.
- imtringued 4y agoEverything including reproduction is useless. I don't know about you but I started programming because of Minecraft and learning about running a business by playing prosperous universe and this gave me some insights that make me suspect that money and it's non neutrality is the biggest unrecognised problem in economics. Remember economics 101 doesn't even have the concept of money or time. In fact econ 101 is an utopia that we want to reach, not how economics works in practice. Positive reinforcement is worth more than people complaining that you are wasting your time by doing the wrong thing. People on HN say you should be curing cancer instead of building a factory in factorio. The former is a poorly defined multidimensional non linear search space with high chance of failure, the latter is a well studied problem with tutorials and guides. That is negative reinforcement.
- ekianjo 4y agoHave you never been a teenager without money ? Lucky you
- _joel 4y agoIt's not just that, it's to enable emulation. I'm not sure how pirated games would fare anyway in an online world nowadays, but getting emulators running is very interesting to me.
- bhaak 4y agoOh, yes, but emulation is not piracy (at least in my view :-)
- FearlessNebula 4y agoPiracy isn’t a money issue, it’s a services issue.
- dtx1 4y agoTrue, to a degree. I won't ever pay 10-15€ for a 10 year old pc game but paying 1-3€ to have it in my steam library and not have to deal with wine/proton by hand is often worth it.
- sergiotapia 4y agoAllow me to make it comprehensible to you. In Bolivia when I was teen, I loved to go to the markets and buy pirated PS2 games. Each one would be about 10 bolivianos. (Around $1.50 ish?) Without these pirated games myself and all of my friends and people I knew would not have been able to play games period. Imagine buying a $60 + import tax for ONE GAME on a Bolivian salary? Ludicrous. I'm very happy the PS5 will finally open and allow gamers in third world countries to play. The PS3 and PS4 to my knowledge never had that freedom the PS2 did back in the day.
- ErneX 4y agoIt probably won’t or be locked to an specific version where only a subset of games will work, provided you never go online etc.
- bhaak 4y agoHow did you get a PS2 to play then? Also note that there are thousands of games that are free to play on PCs. There are even lots of old commercial games that can be downloaded for free now, legally. Just because you can't afford a particular game doesn't mean that there aren't other options. As a teen I couldn't afford every game I wanted either.
- sergiotapia 4y agoI got a PS2 as the big birthday present. Back then the free PC games were KNIGHT online, gunbound, Gunz online, Tibia.... slim pickings. Today kids have Fortnite and such, I agree.
- dfxm12 4y agoThis is Hacker News after all. Tinkering with stuff like this has gotten people into soldering, emulation, PCB design, low level coding, etc., which then gets you into software/computer/electrical engineering. It's not just about saving 50 bucks every now and then. At least for some, it's about satisfying intellectual curiosity as well.