Gaming on Linux separates the casuals from the weirdos

I really don’t like modern gaming, not for the typical chud reasons. I hate the invasion of me and my PCs privacy under the illusion of making gaming more social, modern, and “innovative“. I hate dealing with multiple third party installers that want literal kernal level access just for “anticheating software“. Kernal level access. For Anticheating. If it’s come to that, then I’m not playing. Your casual gamer, “politically“ motivated gamer, real gamer, whatever you want to call them. They largely don’t care. They’re so obsessed with culture war BS that gaming has reached levels of privacy invasion that were warned of decades ago. Retroarch doesn’t need kernal level access, I don’t have to input payment information, create an account, or need an internet connection just to play a single player game (lol, lmao even). You can literally spend YEARS playing all the old games for SNES, SEGA, Playstation 1, 2, and 3 (PS3 is considered old, and so am I…), Xbox, etc.

Modern gaming problems

Everything has become too invasive and corporate. It feels like FOMO and wanting your payment info saved on their third party app is all they care about. IP protections have also become so extremely harsh. Denuvo Anti-Piracy and StarForce are the main belligerents in this case, the latter even having kernel level access, which is legit insane. Imagine an auto manufacturer needing access to your garage in order to protect their IP—you wouldn’t buy that car. Casuals think that giving this similar level of access to a gaming company is fine because it’s just a game or they’re legit ignorant to how dangerous this can be.

Culture BS in gaming

The culture around modern gaming is also severely toxic, so much so that a games enjoyability isn’t even what’s judges anymore. It’s how well the game aligns with certain politics, how much it doesn’t, who worked on it, who didn’t—the list goes on. Gaming Tourist (mostly rightwing political hacks on YouTube and other social media platform) are the main antagonist with this problem, they make money off of outrage and don’t care how badly they make gaming for everyone. I just don’t want any part of it.

I want to enjoy my games in peace when I get some time to myself. I don’t have the bandwidth to care about some chuds insecurities or concerns over diversity in gaming or women looking more and more realistic. Yes, games are supposed to be fun, have a bit of flair, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t have games with a more serious or realistic tone. Too many creators have made a decent buck on making outrage content aimed at the typical audience—fat chuds and incels.

Normal people don’t care if their favorite game series has a bad sequel or a diverse cast. They don’t clutch their pearls over women that look average and not like some overly sexual fantasy. There’s a time and place for that, RPGs, and jRPGS are a great example, but this degree of over sexualizing doesn’t have to be shoved in every genre, every game.

Invasion of privacy

I feel like we all forgot the warnings of IT experts, computer software experts, and others about how invasive companies are willing to become. We’re seeing a lot of it now with how bad companies are utilizing AI in their services. Windows and Google is really bad with this, often installing software without your consent or even knowledge. Kernal level access has given companies great insights into their consumer base, but at what cost? Again, imagine if Wal-Mart just came into your house, looked in your fridge, and left for marketing data purposes, you would be pretty creeped out.

Why is this okay when it’s your PC?

Kernel level access grants companies an unprecedented level of access to your private life under the guise of protecting you from some dude running cheats in CoD or Battlefield. It’s not worth it. That level of access reveals all sorts of information about yourself, like what apps you run, what browser you use, your browsers history—everything. Gaming isn’t that deep, it’s not worth it. Kernel level access is a big deal with privacy and you shouldn’t just install software that has that level of access, especially without letting you know.

Final thoughts

I really enjoy playing old school games. I like going through old PS1 and PS2 jRPGs and seeing which adventure I want to go on. I also like old school cRPGs like Neverwinter Nights, Morrowind, Oblivion, and the DnD series on PC (You can find a lot of them on GOG). They’re fun after all these years and modding communities keep many old games alive and well. Modders also create fan translations to bring an entire library of Japan only games to a modern audience. Most ROMs (the format that emulators play, these are the games), are considered abandoned ware and fine to download.

So install some old emulators, get some ROMs, and have fun ;)