Expensive Gaming Hardware: Thanks AI, We’re All Broke!

They rather play or do gambling, crypto and pornography.

You guys are really going for the trifecta of things not to do.

But we're gonna be talking about that anyways.

During Q4 of 2025, US net loss from sports betting reached 17 billion in 2025, a 35 fold increase from 2019.

All right, guys, here you go.

Prediction marketing, you're more likely going to lose.

Sports betting, you're very much more likely going to lose.

You are wasting your money.

Only fans.

You're definitely wasting your own money.

I don't disagree that you're lonely.

I understand that part.

But this is not going to help that loneliness issue.

This is going to band aid the loneliness issue.

AI assistance is not going to help you either.

Pornography is not healthy for anybody.

It is a band aid to how we feel.

It's loneliness.

It's abandoned.

Get into communities offline and online.

It's the one thing that will help you with this issue.

Sony really needs to look at Helldivers 2 and see what they did.

They have done a really great job with the live service game.

They've done immensely well.

And we got Bungie's marathon, which I do not care about whatsoever because in looks God awful.

The art direction just looks like it's a Picasso painting for a video game.

It's just when you make bad games and when you bet on bad games, this is what happens.

Don't bet on bad games.

Mind you, Concord took like eight years to get out.

Eight years for two weeks.

Give it a month because of the beta.

But two weeks of it being officially live, it couldn't last more than two weeks because it was a woke slop.

Hey, welcome back to Digital Coffee Gaming Brew.

I'm your digital barista, Brett Dyster.

Today we're diving into the wild world of PC gaming.

From buggy photo modes from Expedition 33 to game dev dramas from Wildlight, High Guard, two layoffs that just stuck everywhere.

And Discord's new ID checks.

And why everybody's going to teamspeak.

Skyrocketing hardware prices from HDDs to SSDs to RAM, and the latest industry shakeup.

So grab your favorite brew because you won't want to miss this episode.

Let's go.

That's good.

So Expedition 33 has introduced a new photo mode during its development.

Development blog mentions unexpected issues such as character deformation where Gustav cheeks and chin appear to to melt through his trouser and Sophia's head is detached from her body.

These issues were attributed to a bug related to characters being off screen for an extended period of time.

The photo mode allows players to take pictures during gameplay, cinematics revealing unintended elements like Loon's contorted limbs and Malia's covered in blood.

It's just funny.

I mean, that's just funny.

Bugs that happen during game development or new features development.

I mean this is just one of them.

It's like, whoa, that's scary.

That's really, really scary.

But I mean I like blogs like this because it kind of shows you just it's not always easy to do, even though a lot of times we think some things are easy to do and some unintended consequences happen where we have to.

They have to figure out how to fix everything.

So I like this.

This is actually pretty good and w to them for actually doing it.

So I don't know, it just.

It just seems like a good developer in general and there are not a lot of those these days.

So good on them for giving us a little peek behind the curtain for the developer blog on specifically some features as well.

I think it's a really good way of doing it, even though it got some controversies because it quote unquote used AI, which I don't know who's not using AI anymore, to be honest with you.

Maybe some studios still aren't using it, which is fine.

I have nothing against that whatsoever.

If you don't want to use it, you don't want to use it.

I use it as a tool and it's.

It stays there as a tool.

So more power G if you want to do the old school way.

I do not go against understanding the old school way or understanding how to do it yourself because it kind of just helps you be a better person in general.

But more power to them for doing this and getting it out as well and fixing the bugs, the funny bugs.

So a company that is led by Matthew Ball, which is more of just a I'm pretty sure a data analytical company, indicates that video games are losing attention to gambling, crypto and pornography.

The report is 164 pages presentation focusing on the state of video game industry.

It compares pre and post pandemic consumer spending in eight major video game us, Japan, South Korea, uk, France, Germany, Canada and Italy.

These regions accounted for over 60% of the total video game spending before the pandemic.

Post pandemic, there has been a decrease in the gaming population in these regions.

The US is 2.5 to I guess 2.4 percentage points of the players have stopped playing video games.

The Canadian Trade association reports that 1 in 6 players stop stop playing.

Spending on PC and console gaming in the US is down approximately 8% since 2020 and 2021 equating to about 2.3 billion.

Mobile gaming growth in the US has flattened since 2025 but is still up 12% compared to 2020.

Total spending on console and PC in the major market 8 has decreased by 4.8 billion and mobile gaming spending is is down by 2.3 billion.

Roblox accounts for 67% of net growth in gaming.

Good on them.

But oof.

Chapter four of the report indicates other medium that are capturing consumer attention including social video creator pornography.

So It's Only Fans, AI assistant crypto prediction markets and online sports betting.

US consumption on TikTok has increased by 39 million hours a day compared to pre Covid in 2025.

American consumers spent about 5 billion on Only Fans.

Cryptocurrency gained popularity again in 2025 while the video game industry stagnated.

Users placed 1.5 million bets a day on prediction markets during Q4 of 2025.

US net loss from sports betting reached 17 billion in 2025, a 35 fold increase from 2019.

All right guys, here you go.

Prediction marketing.

You're more likely going to lose.

Sports betting.

You're very much more likely going to lose.

You are wasting your money.

Onlyfans.

You're definitely wasting your own money because she doesn't care about you bro.

Or she doesn't.

He doesn't care about you, bro.

So here's the problem and this is more of a societal problem.

Yes, gaming is not very great right now.

I will give you that.

There are a lot of games that should have not been released that were released or that should have just been canned because they were terrible or their messaging was terrible.

So I'll give you that.

My issue is, is that beyond.

I don't know what AI assistance is unless you're trying to figure out AI that's that's a w social video.

Unless you're trying to create something that's w creator pornography.

That's a huge l. That's a waste of money.

And it doesn't help women whatsoever.

Yes, it helps them monetarily, but you're never going to get with her bro.

And seriously, stop wasting your money.

You could say gam's wasting your money but at least you get something out of it.

This you don't.

You, you get pictures but you you never talk to really the girl.

Cuz more likely it's guys that are Spending this money.

Because still gaming is heavily, predominantly male, depending on what we're talking about.

If it's mobile, it's more female than male.

But the issue is, is that we're spending our time and attention on the wrong thing.

I don't disagree that you're lonely.

I understand that part.

But this is not going to help that loneliness issue.

This is going to Band Aid the loneliness issue.

AI assistance is not going to help you either.

You're still going to be lonely because it's not a real person.

It's just going to tell you what he want to hear.

Crypto, I more consider that more similar to stock trading, but again, it is really, it's worse in a way because there are cliffs it falls off of.

I'm not saying you shouldn't.

I think it's one of the few ones that I agree that you probably should spend your time on prediction markets.

They're fun to look at.

But seriously, stop betting on things that may or may not happen.

You have no idea.

And it's predictive means that you can't tell the feature.

Now, some things you could, and I've done one of them.

It was through Robinhood and it was the election between Kamala and Trump.

But I kind of knew that Trump was going to win.

It really wasn't a hard sell.

So I would say, and sports betting is awful.

You waste more money than you get.

The issue is, is that we are focusing on things we shouldn't be focusing.

I'd say limit social video cut out completely.

Creator pornography.

There is no societal good from this whatsoever.

It's not even healthy for you.

Pornography is not healthy for anybody.

It is a band aid to how we feel.

And it's loneliness.

It's a band aid.

Get into communities offline and online.

It's the one thing that will help you with this issue.

AI assistance.

If you're learning how to use AI for your job.

Video editing, audio editing, that's fine.

Crypto, fine to a certain extent.

Just don't blow all your money on crypto.

Prediction markets, I would say do a few of them, but I really wouldn't do very much of those either.

And then online sports betting is.

You're, you're just wasting your money.

So I mean, from like a, a way of understanding, if you get a PC, you can do a bunch of things with it.

You can video edit, audio edit, do a bunch of things with it.

With betting in general, you, you, you bet and you hope your bet is good because it's all about hope.

You're writing your one and you could.

You could split the field and maybe get some money out of it, but you're riding your bet on a hope, on a feeling.

It's weird.

They could say gaming isn't really.

Yeah, but you could stream and try to figure out how to do a business through there, or figure out how to video edit or figure out a bunch of different things.

At least that's doing something productive.

Unless you're just gaming and you say, I'll get to it and never get to it, then that's not productive at all.

What I'm saying is, is that even though video games is escapism, and I'm not saying you should be spending all your time on gaming either, that's not healthy either.

The other things are worse and we probably need to look at ways of being healthy because this is not healthy at all.

If you want to keep doing it, that's fine, but it's not going to get you to where you want to go for the most part.

So I would I just knock it off, to be honest with you.

Find healthy ways of dealing with your loneliness.

And this is different between guys and girls.

I'm not going to give you practical advice.

I'm just saying find ways of dealing with it.

Go for a walk.

Okay, I'm giving you ways, actually.

Go for a walk.

Do something, but don't spend.

Don't waste your money on this.

All right, moving on to highguard.

Yes, highguard's official website is.

Or from what I know of, is still down.

The site is unavailable.

The website previously contained character bio's lore information about the feature.

The the website went down between February 16th and 17th and Wildlight Entertainment, the development studio behind Hygar, experienced a massive round of layoffs following a rocky launch.

Of course they were like, oh, we're just migrating stuff over.

I'm like, who does that?

You have your working website and then you kind of develop it, develop the new one or you migrate the new one over.

Eventually you don't like just can the whole website just weird.

So there's that.

And then now we're finding out that Tencent funded Wildlife and at least in part through its teeny division.

Game File reported that Tencent was the lead financial backer.

Wildlight described itself as a fully funded studio on its website, but did not clarify the source of its fund funding.

And that's just kind of the tip of the iceberg.

It's like, who is funding these developers that just don't really test their game out?

In the wild look it was an interesting concept.

Highguard was interesting.

The problem is practically it didn't work.

It's still not working.

You have a bunch of different genres meshed into one and it kind it not even kind of it didn't work.

I don't think anybody wanted this game to fail but it just from the look of it from the get go gamers are like eh, I mean I'll try it because it's free to play but really.

And then we played it.

We're like yeah it was a meh.

Wasn't good.

Nope, not at all.

So no surprise here.

It's just it keeps on getting worse.

I mean the from the creators of Titanfall and Apex Legends and then they took it down after the game launched.

We didn't hear anything about the game after the game awards either to well we're gonna lay off a bunch of developers to oh well it's gamers fault for being toxic.

I'm like no it's your fault for making a terrible game loop in a mid game which made it a terrible game.

Everything else was fine.

It's just the game loop was not to oh our website's down so eh, we'll get to it.

To oh well yeah, we're funded by Tencent.

Well we're still indie.

No you're not.

India would not be fully funded and indies actually care about what gamers think too.

And they make for the most part pretty good games.

They are way better than a lot of these studios.

So I don't know what's going to happen Wildlife but I see the writing on the wall.

This game is not going to last a lot longer.

It has about a thousand players playing right now.

I mean I know they, they said they have new stuff, they have new raids and stuff but I don't see it working out very well.

Okay, so Avowed has received a one year anniversary update that is live for all players.

This update includes various communities, requested features, quality of life fixes and additional content.

AVOW is launching on the PS5 as well and the players can now choose from three races.

Dwarves or Orlands and Alana.

I don't know how to say that but three different other races in addition to the existing human and Elf options during character creation.

So it's great they've added some quality of life things.

My, my first thing is why were not these things added in the beginning?

Especially the races probably should have had more than two.

That that's just a weird oversight that should have been there in the beginning.

The other issue is, is that all these new races don't have the proper, I guess, scripting or choices as the other ones because the lead narrative team wasn't available to actually do it like.

So this was just all half baked.

Good.

Yeah, that's good.

Good.

Good job, Obsidian.

You're really showing us how well you make your games again.

I mean, what is this?

This stuff should have been in there in the beginning and it wasn't.

Especially the races.

The races is the biggest issue for me.

It's like, why weren't these in there in the beginning?

Why.

Why did it take you a year, why did it take you one year to add three races?

I don't know what's going on with game development, but I feel like all the developers are just saying how they don't have enough resources for anything.

So who is draining your resources and get rid of them?

But anyways, I. I don't understand why it took you this long to add three races that should have been there at the beginning.

I think this is like my biggest.

Like, I'm confused on why it took you so long to add three races and not really implement them properly.

It just blows my mind.

All right, so Crimson Desert will feature voice performed by real people, as stated by Pearl Abyss Director of Marketing Will Powers.

Powers did not confirm whether 100% of the NPCs will have human voices.

He did mention that all the main NPCs and those in the side quest will have voices performed by actors.

The game will include voice acting in different languages, so at least the main ones will have voice actors, but the other ones may or may not.

So we might get some AI voice acting as well.

So I don't know how I feel about this.

I. I don't think I'm super against it, but I guess I get it that it might get expensive to have all these actually fully voiced and having different people fully voice.

It does get a little expensive for the game.

Plus they're not having any like battle pass or microtransactions inside the game.

So I can't get too mad at them because they're actually training us pretty well and they're probably going to do really well because I'm actually interested in playing this game the most.

Seems like a really interesting game from what you can do.

It's got like Redempt Redemption and like Skyrim all meshed into one.

It seems like with being different on itself, so I can't be against it too much.

But yeah, I mean, here comes AI for Everything.

I mean, we're not going to get.

We're not going to get away from it, so might as well just deal with it, so.

Discord has decided to introduce digital ID and face scanning requirements for some online servers.

Following the change, TeamSpeak has experienced a significant increase in users.

Teamspeak hosting capacity in the US has been maxed out, with all servers operating at full capacity.

Teamspeak plans to expand by adding additional servers to his Frankfurt 3 in Toronto 1 and a few regions including Amsterdam 3, will still have available server capacity.

Discord's age verification requirements will take effect in early March 2026.

The new setting will automatically filter out content unsuitable for miners.

For all existing and new Discord accounts, users wishing to access age restricted content must complete an age verification process, which includes uploading a disc, government issue ID or facial recognition.

Discord will implement an age inference model that analyzes your user activity to determine if they are adults.

I'm so glad you can't just look at the driver's license.

Nope, you have to verify it.

Discord claims the new system aims to provide strong protections for teens while allowing verified adults more flexibility.

As long as you upload it to their servers, because there is nothing that will ever happen.

Discord has never been hacked.

Oh wait, it has.

And they took all the IDs when they hacked them.

It's not a good look, Discord, especially since you don't have to do it in the us, but you're just doing it for everybody.

For some odd reason, this is not going to go very well, especially since, well, I did try teamspeak and it's still a little difficult to understand, but at least it's more open source than Discord is.

The problem is hosting your own server.

It's still back at TeamSpeak 3 and not TeamSpeak 6.

I think they're on, so you still have to wait for that.

But if you can actually host your own server, get a nasal thing and have it like in there and do it yourself type of thing, way, way better than relying on Discord.

Because Discord, Nickel and Dimesy.

Now for everything, try our Nitro.

No, and the funny part is the monthly subscription of Nitro you could buy for just doing your own server on Teamspeak.

So I mean, give or take.

I mean, it is what it is.

There are some, several other ones that I'm looking into as well.

I think the other one I'm looking at is Stouta.

It was called like, it's an alternative.

It's very Discord like, so I'll try it out and see if it's actually any good.

But yeah, I don't think there's really is an actual alternative to Discord right now.

Gilded was one of them, but that is shut down by Roblox.

So that's unfortunate because they really could have done something now, but can't do it now when you're shut down.

I mean, you had other ones like Cursed, which Twitch bought a while ago, but that didn't work out so well either.

So it's unfortunate because Discord is all we got.

I mean you can go to Slack, you can go to Element Elements, you can try those, but Discord is going to be the one that people are going to stick at until something better comes along.

All right, so unfortunately some more bad news in the gaming industry.

One is Sony just confirmed that the Bluepoint games known for remasters like Shadow of Colossus and Demon's Souls will be closed in March.

The closure will result in approximately 70 employees being laid off.

Sony's decision followed a recent business review.

Bluepoint Games was founded in 2008, was involved in remastering titles such as God of War and God of War 2.

The studio most recent work was on the 2020 update of Demon Souls for PS5.

Bluepoint was working on a live service God of War game which was canceled along with several projects after the poor performance of the game.

Concord, man, Concord is just really just taking out other things too.

Sony aimed to release 12 live service games by 2025, but canceled eight of those projects by that time.

Man, Concord is just wrecking the game industry.

It's been dead for a while and it's still causing havoc for Sony.

I mean when Concord came out it just did not do well and then nobody was playing the game and they're like, nope, two weeks in we're pulling the plug.

We lost millions of dollars on this God awful game.

But hey, we'll give it a try again with the Horizon one that doesn't look good at all.

I don't know why.

I don't know why they keep on doing it.

Sony really needs to look at Helldivers 2 and see what they did.

They have done a really great job with the live service game.

They've done immensely well.

And we got Bungie's marathon, which I do not care about whatsoever because it looks God awful.

Dr.

Direction just looks like it's a Picasso painting for a video game.

It just looks awful.

I know, I know.

Picasso's like everybody liked him and all, but he was just.

He was trendy for the time because everybody else was doing like beautiful paintings.

And he's like, let's just make an ugly painting.

Because that's modern, I guess.

Anyways, it's just when you make bad games and when you bet on bad games, this is what happens.

Don't bet on bad games.

Marathon should have just been redone from the ground up.

I know this was spent a lot more money, but make it look appealing at least.

Even Destiny 2 looks appealing to a certain extent.

No, they're like, let's make this the ugliest game we can.

And just make it really pretty with the graphics, like the foliage and stuff.

But make the people ugly.

Make like.

I don't know how that works, but game developers, especially in the west, just seem to like, really want to make ugly people.

I don't know what the obsession is.

It's not a good look.

And this is what happens when you make terrible games.

And you bet on terrible games too, mind you.

Concord took like eight years to get out.

Eight years for two weeks.

Give it a month because of the beta.

But two weeks of it being officially live, it couldn't last more than two weeks because it was a woke slop.

They were proud of it.

And everybody's like, this does not look good.

Why are you making this game?

You're like, no, it's good, it's good.

People will like it.

And they didn't.

And Sony was like pulling the plug.

We're done.

And this is the.

Well, the consequences of making bad bets, really bad bets.

Like, I don't know who made that bet on that game, but man, if I was that person, be like, no, we're not spending money on this.

This is terrible.

So it's, it's going to be more pain for gaming until they can get their act together, to be honest with you.

And it's basically to fire all the woke people.

That's how you get your act together.

All right, so my main thing, why is it so terrible nowadays to just build a computer, buy a computer, buy a console, like everything in between?

Here's One reason why SSDs are super expensive.

RAM is super expensive and hard to find.

And now HCDs are super expensive and hard to find.

Because the Western Digital CEO, Irving Tan stated that the company's entire HDD capacity for the year is booked out.

The demand for HDDs is driven by a significant increase in enterprise demand, particularly due to AI super cycle.

Western Digital consumer market share has dropped by 5% well, no duh.

Two of the three major hard drive manufacturers, Western Digital and Seagate, have sold all their stock for 2026.

Remaining stock for 2027 is.

And 2028 is being allocated to enterprise clients.

Screw you.

Both companies announced during their January earning call that all manufacturing capacities for 2026 has been allocated and there's no production expansion is planned.

Seagate CEO William Mosley mentioned that the company is taking orders for the first half of 2027 and that there is discussion about demand growth projections for calendar 2028.

Western Digital CEO Tang V. Tan stated that the company has strong commercial agreements with key consumers or customers extending into 2027 and 2028.

Like, can we not even have one thing that's not expensive or out.

Man, these companies are just like, man, if they're going to pay, AI is awesome.

I get big paychecks and I'm gonna screw over the little guy.

Screw you.

I mean, I've always been on the fence of AI, but AI is making me just hate it more because of this.

I can't do anything.

I can't upgrade anything.

Forget upgrading a gpu.

Forget upgrading your phone, forget upgrading your laptop, Forget upgrading anything.

Because AI will just magically make everything utopian.

Screw that.

I mean, jeez, it's just so bad.

And it's, it's, it's just to make stupid videos and to have it do work for you that you don't want to do.

But none of these companies saw it.

None of these companies saw.

Oh, maybe we should, I guess in 2020 start building more capacity.

No, we'll just keep on doing our thing and then we'll just screw over the normal guy because who cares about them?

I mean, Micron doesn't.

The Western Digital doesn't.

SanDisk doesn't.

Seagate doesn't.

Nobody does.

Because screw the little guy.

They don't buy our stuff enough until the bubble hits.

And then you're gonna be like, oh, we need you.

It's gonna be like, screw you.

I'm gonna make sure it's the lowest price I can buy so I can make sure that you hurt the most.

That's how we should all feel.

What is this?

Nobody saw this coming.

Nobody.

Yeah, I get it.

Building plants is expensive.

But you had to see the writing on the wall somewhere.

Maybe chat GPT3, maybe three years ago, something.

No, no, we're just gonna like cut into the consumer, the regular guys portfolio so we don't have to make as much for them so we can get the maximized profits over here.

Oh, but I want to upgrade something.

Sucks to be you.

I mean, it's just ridiculous.

And you know, it's their, it's their fault because everybody saw the writing on the wall.

Everybody saw what was going to happen.

And some companies are like, nah, I'm good.

I mean, I know that silver prices are going bonanzas or did go bonanzas.

I'm good.

You know, a lot of these enterprises are buying more and more from us.

We won't do anything about it.

We'll just let it.

Just let it ride.

Just let it ride until the consumer can't afford it.

Because why not have it the saying, you will own nothing and be happy.

It's like, what is wrong with you?

It's just, I, I just, it's.

It's the dumbest thing.

And you know, it's the dumbest thing because everybody saw the writing on the wall except for the companies.

Apparently companies didn't get the memo.

AI is going to take over and make sure that you have enough stock.

And we're good.

Little guy can sweat it.

Who cares about the little guy?

I mean, I know they made us like really profitable for a while and we're relying on them, but yeah, we don't need them anymore.

We've got AI.

AI will tell us all the pretty things and it'll be nice to us and it will tell us that we have all great ideas except for most of them, more likely or not.

But you're good for it, right?

Right.

Anyways, here's to 2030 actually being somewhat okay to get tech parts, but right now I would hold off.

I would hold off until.

Until things get better.

Anyways, thank you for listening to Digital Coffee Gaming Brew.

We do appreciate it.

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Enjoy me next week as I talk about what's going on in the gaming industry, especially the PC side of it.

And guys, I hope you have a good weekend.

Game what you want to game and see you next week later.