I've had good experiences streaming, but I also don't like competitive FPSs. So we'll have to agree to disagree. Maybe you live farther from data-centers than I do.

Rather than buying a new computer to play cyberpunk, I streamed it and it and was quite happy. It cost me $10 for one month and my relationship with the company ended afterwards. I've used streaming a bit more and I've tried several different services and generally been happy with all of them. nVidia now is great, I just finished BG3 on it and it ran well.

> It perpetuates the idea that you pay for a thing but don't own it.

I think that's myopic. A new computer every 8 years for $2000 or $10 a month for 8 years? From a purely monetary and economic point of view, there are clear advantages to subscriptions. From economies of scale perspectives there are clearly advantages to subscriptions/centralization. There are disadvantages, too. So it's most correct to talk about trade-offs.

Where I think you are right is that it gives vendors power to alter the rules and leave you praying they alter them no further. We are seeing the down side of now, with the enshittification/shrinkflation/brand looting of nearly everything in the American economy. So I agree that in a might makes right world, a world in which there are no consequences for our aristocracy, centralization/streaming/etc puts you in a weaker negotiating position and could very likely be good in the short term, but bad in the long term.

> It creates more incentives for ongoing monetization (to support the streaming infra)

I think that depends on if these streaming companies are subsidizing the streaming or not in the same way Uber subsidized rides: at a loss. Allocation for peak capacity is the direct cost to the company, and any unused capacity could potentially be re-tasked for other purposes. Any user that doesn't contribute to peak capacity+growth projection is free from the perspective of hardware acquisition. Hardware is an economies of scale world, there may even be positive tax implications.

I'm not sold that there is any special incentive to monetize streaming unless the companies are streaming at a loss. Letting kids gamble is the culture of mobile gaming, and I think it's culture that perpetuates it more than structure. I think the PC market salivates at the idea of loot boxes (just look at EA), but the culture is quite against them. PC gamers have provided consequences to predatory publishers while Apple and mobile gamers have not.

> It introduces horrendous input lag and it means there's yet another probably buggy layer of abstraction between the game and the player.

I haven't personally experienced this. I have had almost entirely good streaming experiences on broadband. I think from a purely theoretical point of view, input+vision doubles the potential latency and therefore it should be worse.

I think from a practical point of view it's probably easier for one company to "solve" input/graphics lag for all games while games run in ideal conditions, than it is for every game's netcode to be fantastic.

While we're comparing and contrasting:

Have you read the EULA's of the anti-cheat software on some of these games? Literal root kits, some from Chinese companies, some that allow direct raw memory dumping from the computer if not direct RCE/remote access for investigation.

From an environmental point of view computing from a datacenter as well as time sharing devices is probably a win.

So while you come in strong against it. I think you should be somewhat respectful of other people's positive experiences.

"Streaming is awful" is poor criticism. "Streaming quality is greatly dependent on where you live and your internet quality" is probably an accurate criticism. Streaming from SJC in San Francisco is probably going to be a pretty good experience.