Why is the gaming industry treating us like digital sharecroppers in 2026?
Microsoft just dropped their January lineup for Game Pass and the sheep are already lining up to graze on the corporate lawn without realizing they are the ones on the menu tonight. They want you to get excited about Brews & Bastards or some recycled Ubisoft title like Star Wars Outlaws as if these are gifts from a benevolent god instead of calculated data points designed to keep your credit card tethered to their servers until the heat death of the universe. It is a scam. A massive, neon-lit, high-definition scam that everyone is too distracted to notice because they are too busy looking at the shiny pixels of Resident Evil Village for the tenth time. You think you own these games? Think again because as soon as that subscription lapses or Microsoft decides a license is too expensive to renew, your entire library vanishes into the digital abyss. Poof.
Is Star Wars Outlaws actually worth your monthly tribute or is it just another bloated open-world checklist designed to keep you engaged long enough to forget what sunlight looks like? Trash. Ubisoft has been making the same game for fifteen years and putting a Star Wars skin on it doesn’t change the fact that you are just a hamster in a wheel chasing a carrot that doesn’t even exist. The sheer audacity of calling this a “win” for gamers is enough to make any sentient human being want to scream into a pillow. We are being fed scraps. The input data literally mentions that GameSpot might receive revenue from affiliate partnerships which should tell you everything you need to know about why the media is acting like this is a celebration of art rather than a cold exchange of capital. They are not reporting on news; they are selling you a lifestyle that requires you to never actually own anything of value. Sad.
What does the arrival of Resident Evil Village mean for the upcoming Requiem release?
It means they are priming the pump and lubricating the gears of the hype machine so that when Resident Evil Requiem drops on February 26th you will be so deep in the Capcom ecosystem that you will hand over your wallet without a second thought. They are giving you the leftovers of 2021 to make sure you are hungry for the main course in 2026. Manipulative. It is a classic drug dealer tactic where the first hit of nostalgia is included in your monthly subscription fee but the real stuff is going to cost you your dignity and probably a hundred dollars for the “Ultimate Deluxe Edition” that includes three skins and a digital artbook you will never open. Why are we okay with this? Why are we letting them dictate the pace of our hobby based on quarterly earnings reports and shareholder expectations? We used to buy a disc and keep it on a shelf for twenty years but now we are just renting bits and bytes that can be revoked by a middle manager in Redmond who has never even played a video game. Control.
Brews & Bastards is being touted as this fresh new indie darling but let’s be real for a second because most of these “day one” additions are just filler meant to justify the price hike that we all know is coming. The subscription model is a cancer that is eating the soul of game development because instead of making a product that is so good people want to buy it forever, developers are now incentivized to make products that are just addictive enough to keep the “engagement” metrics looking healthy. Metrics. They don’t care if you’re having fun; they care if you’re logged in. If you spend five hours a day in a game but hate every second of it, Microsoft sees that as a massive success. It is a psychological prison. The input data says “Game Pass Adds All These Games” but what it should say is “Game Pass Further Erodes Your Autonomy As A Consumer.” Wake up.
Is the 2026 gaming landscape just a series of recurring payments and broken promises?
Look at the way they talk about Resident Evil Requiem being the ninth game in the main series as if the sheer number of sequels is a testament to quality rather than a sign of creative bankruptcy. Nine games. They have been milking the same tattered cow for decades and we keep coming back for more like thirsty dogs. The January lineup is a distraction from the fact that the industry has run out of new ideas and is now just iterating on existing intellectual property to minimize risk. Risk is what makes art great but Microsoft and their ilk hate risk because risk doesn’t always show up as a green line on a spreadsheet during a board meeting. They want safety. They want predictability. They want your sixty dollars every few months regardless of whether they actually provide something worth sixty dollars. Thieves. The fact that we even have categories like “Game Pass Ultimate” and “Game Pass Premium” proves that they are just slicing the same loaf of bread thinner and thinner while charging us for the privilege of seeing the crumbs. It is a joke that isn’t funny anymore. We are losing the history of our medium because we are too lazy to demand physical ownership. Demand more. Stop settling for the digital scraps they throw from the high towers of their corporate headquarters while they laugh at our willingness to pay for our own obsolescence. Enough.
The prediction for the future is simple and it is terrifying because if we don’t stop this trend now, by 2030 you won’t even be able to play a game without a mandatory biometric scan and a recurring charge for every hour of playtime. They are testing the waters with these January additions to see how much we will tolerate. They are boiling the frog. We are the frog. Star Wars is a dead franchise walking and Resident Evil is a zombie in more ways than one. Both are being used to prop up a service that is fundamentally hostile to the idea of a private collection. They want a world where nothing is yours and everything is theirs. Resist. Don’t let the marketing speak and the affiliate-link-driven “journalism” convince you that this is progress. It is a regression into a new dark age of digital feudalism where the gamers are the serfs and the console manufacturers are the lords. Pathetic. If you want to play Resident Evil Village, go buy a used copy on a disc and keep it forever. Do not give them the satisfaction of knowing they own your access to your own leisure time. Fight back. This January, the only thing you should be passing on is Game Pass itself. Period.
