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Gamers’ Worst Nightmares About AI Are Coming True

From the global RAM shortage driving up console prices to job loss in the industry, gaming is shaping up to be one of the AI boom’s biggest casualties.

The gaming community freaked out last week when Seamus Blackley, the original creator of Xbox, claimed the console was sunsetting in an interview with Gamesbeat.

However, if you read the interview or his comments on Bluesky, you’ll realize he meant that something at the core of Xbox feels off: The console he built is in “distress.” Blackley speculated that the February shuffle of Asha Sharma from AI executive to executive vice president and CEO of Microsoft Gaming means the product is in “palliative care.”

Xbox is not shutting down, but many were quick to believe the headlines, as there’s a dark cloud over the industry right now. What happened?

While gaming experienced an unprecedented high during the pandemic, artificial intelligence crept up behind it. AI’s proliferation in the gaming industry is already accelerating job loss and cheapening the work of developers at studios now scrutinized by anti-AI gamers. Data centers have siphoned RAM from the industry, resulting in a global memory shortage. This has driven up the costs of hardware required for consoles, stalling releases and rendering at-home PC building—once a rite of passage for entry-level gamers—a luxury.

In December, Valve announced it was discontinuing its Steam Deck LCD 256GB model, released in 2022, and the 2023 upgrade has all but disappeared. This is the first discontinuation of a major console before the launch of a worthy upgrade; Valve’s Steam Machine, a box six times more powerful than the Steam Deck, is meant to be released this year, but its exact timing and cost remain unknown. Meanwhile, prices have gone up on Xbox and PS5. Per Bloomberg, Sony has yet to confirm or deny that the successor to the PS5, originally slated for release in late 2027, is delayed another year. And Nintendo, having narrowly avoided new tariffs to the Switch 2 launch in 2025, which they are now suing the US government over, is not ruling out price hikes.

Six years ago, while the world was in lockdown, the gaming industry was thriving.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons sold 13.4 million units within just six weeks of its launch date in March 2020, the most digital units of a console game ever sold in a single month. That same year, global gaming revenue increased by 23 percent, and millions who would not have previously labeled themselves gamers picked up controllers and booted up PCs.

When the Playstation 5 launched in November 2020, seven years after its predecessor, it felt like a promise that the gaming industry would be fine, even while other industries struggled to adjust to the pandemic. In July of 2021, Valve revealed the Steam Deck, a handheld console that would make it possible to play Steam games anywhere. Preorders sold out within hours.

Meanwhile, YouTubers and Twitch streamers rose in popularity with millions at home watching gamers stream in place of other on-screen entertainment. The power centers of the game industry began to bulge. Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax Media. Sony responded by acquiring Bungie in 2022 while making a $1.45 billion investment in Epic Games. Job postings in the gaming space rose by 40 percent during the pandemic.

But the rise of AI has prompted a random-access memory shortage now being referred to as RAMaggedon—and it’s bringing all of this progress to a grinding halt.

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence has upended every corner of the tech industry. Nearly a third of adults and most teens in the US use AI on a daily basis, according to Pew Research. Data centers have doubled in the US since 2022, raising electricity costs up to 267 percent more than they were five years ago for households near those warehouses, according to Bloomberg. Reports show the US accounts for more than half of “hyperscale facilities,” centers built specifically for AI, many of which are multibillion-dollar investments. Most Popular

Those massive computing stacks require gobs of RAM, the short-term memory of any device. RAM is the green, black, and gold brain of electronics. Data centers, both AI-specific and not, are expected to consume around 70 percent of global RAM production in 2026, according to The Wall Street Journal. The shortage in available chips has caused mass delays and price hikes of electronics worldwide, rendering the gaming industry one of its biggest casualties so far.

Gaming is “the only mass media entertainment where the creative ceiling is limited by consumer hardware,” Washington Post game critic Gene Park tells me. “So, if consumers can’t afford or access higher grade tech like sufficient RAM, the innovation will slow down.” This happens because RAM is what dictates how minute or vast world-building within a game can be.

Park argues that developers could be forced to compromise stories, art, non-player characters, battles, worlds—all of which are already at risk of being automated by new AI tools. Park says those tools still have substantial limitations. “None of it is even close to replacing handcrafted video games.”

Close or not, the impact that these tools are having on games—and the push within game studios to use them to speed up development through automation—is turning up noses.

None of the developers I spoke with want to use AI, and most gamers won’t have it, even in limited quantities. Alec Robbins, narrative director at Squanch Games, was told to use generative AI in a project, a decision he "fought against and lost.” For gamers, it “didn’t matter” that the AI became “localized to a very specific and small part of the game,” though. Its mere presence diluted the entire experience and caused the company “reputational damage,” Robbins says.

There was similar backlash against Divinity last year when Larian Studios’ CEO admitted the game used generative AI. Gamers didn’t care that it was used for workflow; just the mention of AI forced the company to walk it back. Larian Studios declined a request for comment.

There’s a fear among the staff of major studios that make AAA games (like Playstation, Xbox, and Rockstar) that CEOs will continue to fall for the potential of AI rather than the reality, and thus gut workplaces. About 45,000 gaming employees lost their jobs from 2022 to the end of 2025, with up to 10,000 layoffs predicted for 2026.

I spoke with several longtime AAA employees, all of whom requested anonymity over fear of retribution in an already volatile industry. A veteran game developer at Xbox says layoffs and fewer job postings have disproportionately impacted junior staffers, and now “everyone is just having seniors do the work.” That work is often supplemented with AI. “There was this myth” the developer tells me, that AI is “going to allow devs to focus on, you know, the good stuff, the hard stuff. But the problem is, OK, then who does the basic stuff? And the answer is … no one.”

A senior sound designer for one AAA studio says employees go along with AI because they’re doing “whatever they can to stay hirable.” If they’re not “keeping up with the times,” or are outwardly anti-AI, they risk their jobs. “Many of my peers are already looking for work in other sectors just to more reliably provide for themselves and their families.” Studios have already begun implementing generative AI to speedrun or even bypass character speech, avoiding hiring voice actors.

The only industry workers who could benefit from AI are streamers. Spencer Agnew, director of programming for Smosh Games, thinks cost increases driven by the RAM shortage could mean that gamers unable to play might tune into streams more. “Some streamers could see it as advantageous for their audience to not have access to these games … so they become dependent on the streamer to provide that experience.”

In the aftermath of the sunsetting rumors, Xbox announced its next-gen console under the name Project Helix. The company has been running behind in console sales since the release of the Xbox Series X in 2020, selling less than even the original Nintendo Switch in 2025. Project Helix, due within a couple of years, will be an open-platform hybrid PC-console, reportedly with no exclusive titles.

If RAMaggedon continues at its current pace, experts are predicting the cost for this next console will land somewhere between $900 and $1,200, double the price of the last Series X.

A source familiar with Xbox’s new strategy assured me the brand is “definitely not in distress” and that, while the latest project may look and feel different, the company is still committed to innovation. As far as AI use, the source claims Xbox will continue “using AI responsibly and transparently” to “both player and dev benefit.”

A longtime AAA video game company executive tells me he believes the CEOs insisting AI be integrated into the gaming industry will eventually fail when gaming fans ultimately reject the results. “Because we will not buy their shit. And we will not give them explosive growth. We will not, you know, do cosplay. We will not go to cons. We will not generate merch. We will not make fan fiction. We will not make fan games. Like, we will do none of the things they want, because it sucks.”

While employees at major studios feel buckled under AI, consumers can still help dictate where the next 10 years of gaming go. Gamers, rise up.

(Because Fuck paywalls.)

I don’t really play many games like CS, BF, COD because 1st person perspective shooters give me motion sickness/vertigo. I spent nearly a decade playing wow, and leading raids over vent. In those instances where men have been assholes, I had the ability to just kick assholes from my raid. I have been playing arc raiders, and at the start it was a mixed bag. Turning off cross play so I’m only in matches with other PC players made it much better. 95% of the interactions I’ve had with men after eliminating console players have been nice and respectful.

As a woman, and a gamer, seeing more women in the industry would be nice, but I don’t really think having more women in leadership roles will draw more women into playing games.

The solution to drawing more women into games is to make quality products at a reasonable price; (by reasonable I mean, able to make a profit without gouging customers.) The solution is to end console exclusivity and release on all platforms. The solution is to allow their customers to own the game they purchase instead of trying to make them rent it. (These sorts of changes will draw in men, women, trans/non-binary from across the board.)

Plenty of games get released full of bugs that get fixed after release because the bean counters at the top are rushing release, or are meddling in content creation when their MBA gives them no practical experience in development, coding, art, music, or play testing. I’m a woman, and I’m not spending money on a buggy piece of shit.

Then there is the issue with day 1 DLC. Day one DLC is not DLC, it’s a fucking money grab designed to milk more income out of your customers. How about those micro-transactions? How about taking some fucking chances instead of releasing sequel after sequel. How many COD and BF games do we really need? I’m a woman, and I’m not interested in playing the same boring, rehashed garbage over and over. I’m pretty sure people in other demographics have similar views.

The solution to making good games is also not MOAR graphics; it doesn’t matter if the art is made by a male/female/non-binary person. Plenty of small studios release games with low/mid graphics and do really well. See Stardew Valley, Hades 1 & 2, hollow knight, terraria, slay the spire, don’t starve, mega bonk, ect.

The solution to making good games is understanding game theory, and the type of game you want to release. Games fall into general modalities. Some games could involve lots of collecting (pokemon,) beating hard enemies/bosses (dark souls,) telling a story (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33,) open world exploration (Fall-out 4.) Good games do 1-3 of these things really well. We’re getting to a place where we see more female or LGBT video game protagonists/characters. That inclusivity is great, but that doesn’t stop a game from being trash everywhere else. (Thank you Lara Croft for crawling so the rest of us could walk and run.) I’m not going to run out and buy a game with a female protagonist if the game play is trash.

The Tetris Company is a company that licenses tetris to 3rd parties, and occasionally releases rehashed versions of tetris. Nothing this company does is groundbreaking in anyway, other than trying to be an inclusive employer. (Kudos to them for recognizing the need for inclusivity in organizational hierarchy.) Per the article: Maya Rogers has been the CEO at Tetris since 2014. Her father, Henk Rogers, founded The Tetris Company with Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov back in 1996. Maya Rogers is a fucking nepo baby, so any hot take coming out of her mouth is kinda meaningless to me.

As a NYer, I’m pretty pissed at the AG when a few months ago I was pretty happy with her. Between this, and their insane plan to force our PCs to implement age verification; Leticia James is intoxicated on the smell of her own farts.

I have briefly tried path of exile. It is also a good game, but maybe not for the casual aRPG player.

What I find really strange about PoE is that active skills you cast are tied to putting gems in your gear. As I continued to play, I found it frustrating. I might find a piece of gear that has good stats for my character, but the gem sockets are the wrong color for my gems that contain my skills. This necessitated grinding materials to re-roll the gem sockets, which was RNG. I found this to be a clunky way to change your skills too.

In grim dawn, you acquire active skills and stats as you level up and put points in your mastery. So if you want a skill, you base mastery must be raised high enough to unlock it, then you put a point in the skill. Putting additional points in the skill makes it stronger.

In terms of leveling up and making your character stronger, the system for spending points was pretty daunting in PoE. Resetting your points gets more and more expensive as your character levels up in PoE. This juxtaposed with the gem system for active skills just felt super clunky.

In grim dawn, leveling up your mastery gives you stats like physique, cunning, and spirit. If you are putting points into a base mastery for an arcanist, those base mastery points will overall give you more spirit per level; which means more energy regen for casting, and more magic damage. If you’re putting points into base mastery for a night blade, over time that gives you more cunning, for weapons based attacks, crit, and bleed. Putting points into base mastery for the soilder gives you more physique overtime, which gives you health regen, and the ability to avoid attacks. What I’m getting at here is the mastery system gives you the correct balance of stats. (Remember, you get to pick a second class/mastery at level 10.) As you level, you also get points to put into your characters base physique, cunning, or spirit which can help make you more well rounded, or boost a stat your are lacking due to the class choices you make. (Like a soldier + nightblade give you way more physique and cunning, and you might be running out of energy because you’re lacking spirit, you have a way to put points into spirit only to rectify this.) Reclaiming mastery points has a fixed cost and isn’t expensive the way it is in PoE.

The class/mastery system vs cost to make changes felt rewarding. It encouraged experimentation. PoE wanting/needing to make changes felt more punishing. I found in PoE I often waited to add points to my skill tree for a long time because I was worried about gem socket color on gear i might find, and the types of active skills I would find. Eventually I’d get locked into a play style and experimenting wasn’t rewarding in PoE.

The complexity of PoE eventually caused me to put it down. Grim dawn has the right balance of being more complex than Diablo 3, and simpler than PoE. Easy to pick up, with lots of depth too.

Refusing to release titles to the PC isn’t going to make me run out and purchase a console. There are tons of games on PC. My backlog is long enough that I can live happily without whatever kind of bullshit Nintendo, Sony, and Xbox are trying to peddle. Assuming I did care about a specific title, and it’s being gate locked by console exclusivity, I’ll fucking pirate it. Sony, Microslop, and Nintendo can all get fucked.

Grim dawn is an amazing game - 2,156 hours, (90 days,) played and counting. I can’t wait for the new expansion.

Here is a link to my review, with a copy paste below.

What happens when diablo, torchlight, and titan quest gang bang a video game developer and you’re not quite sure who the father is? Grim Dawn.

This game, hands down gets a 10/10. Absolutely worth purchasing at full price. Here’s why.

1. The class system is amazing. You can select a single class, or you can pick up a secondary class which allows for hybrid builds. The class system is similar to titan quest, in fact the game uses the TQ engine. (I own TQ, I haven’t play much, but now I am curios to pick it back up because Grim Dawn is so awesome.) The class system creates so much depth with varied playstyles.

Added for copy/paste; here is the full list of classes/masteries. Arcanist, Demolitionist, Nightblade, Occultist, Shaman, Soldier, Inquisitor, Necromancer, Oathkeeper, Berserker.

2. SO MUCH LORE. Really! I loved reading all the little notes you find scattered about the world. Many of the NPCs you interact with are pretty memorable, and add depth to the story.

3. Amazing art and music really help create the gritty and desperate world that is Grim Dawn. Boss battles feel intense. Dungeons and secret lairs feel creepy.

4. 3 different difficulties if you like achievement hunting. Crucible mode if you want to do a little PVP, or co-op crucible. 3 different crucible difficulties.

5. Despite how RNG the gear system drops can be, you have the ability to buy back talent and devotion points to adjust for gear drops. Skill bonuses on gear work well with the class/talent system. (Aside from the class/mastery system, there are a series of constelations you can also earn points for. Some constelations can be linked with your skills from your mastery class giving it additional effects.)

6. Gear is tradable. If you haven’t been blessed by RNGesus, you can trade stored gear with total strangers in multiplayer crucible. I love this. I love being able to give gear to someone that might be able to use it instead of letting it collect dust in my chest. Likewise, I have been freely given some pretty nice pieces too.

7. The community is AMAZING.

In summary, I love Grim Dawn. Grim Dawn, please marry me and let me have your babies.

Refusing to release titles to the PC isn’t going to make me run out and purchase a console. There are tons of games on PC. My backlog is long enough that I can live happily without whatever kind of bullshit Nintendo, Sony, and Xbox are trying to peddle. Assuming I did care about a specific title, and it’s being gate locked by console exclusivity, I’ll fucking pirate it. Sony, Microslop, and Nintendo can all get fucked.

AMD, You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy the cryptominers, not join them! Bring balance to the video card market, not leave it in darkness!

20 years ago I was playing world of warcraft on a mac book. I got like 10 FPS but I was still raiding.

That was the first thing I noticed too.

The stuff I read about the play testing indicated it was PVE. I didn’t do enough research before purchasing, no argument there. I happen to actually enjoy fighting the arc, and I really enjoy when I can play co-operatively, and do things like save someone that’s pinned down by ARC, or help others down bastions, bombadiers, and matriarchs. Getting shot in the back after I’m soloing arc and my shield is down isn’t fun. Getting shot even after I say I’m friendly, and I can’t defend myself, or else trigger the algorithm to put me in more pvp matchups isn’t fun. If it was already tested as a PvE game, I don’t see why they can’t give us PVE and PVP lobbies. Letting players decide if they want to risk PVP or not.

For me, it wasn’t about the AI. It’s that early development of the game was all PvE play. PVP was something that was added at launch, and the game is tagged as PvE, along with PvP on steam. Stupid me thought there would be PvE only lobbies and I was clearly mistaken. I tried playing it, I put 100 hours in. The entire game was me grinding the easy map, to level up and craft/buy better guns, only to be shot on sight by someone and have everything I worked for taken. I would solo down bastions, leapers, and bombdiers to have someone run up and shoot me on site, without asking if I would share loot. (I would rather share than lose everything.) Events in the game also reward PvP play by awarding cred. People are making smurf accounts so they can end up in friendly matches to dominate people that don’t want to pvp. Enemy spawns are fucked up too. I’ve downed arc only for the corpses to despawn as I attempt to loot it. I’ve walked into clear areas, only to have bombadiers spawn on top of me out of nowhere. The worst part of the game is being dropped into a map/match after 10 minutes has elapsed, which means anything decent has already been looted and you’re more likely to run into people camping extraction points. They have a temp event running that rewards PvE cooperative play, and I’ve still gotten killed on site, although less frequently. After the event is over, I’ll probably uninstall the game again.

Tangentially related: Fuck Arc raiders.

When it comes to making a purchase of like $500 - $1000, I use affirm. My credit score is 715, and I get a rate of 16% APR. My credit cards won’t give me a lower rate than 30%. I only make 1 purchase like this per year. In 2024 I used it to by an electric bike. In 2025 I used it to purchase all the parts I needed to build a new PC. When I do this, I usually have about half of the money for the thing I’m buying already saved.

The fact like services like this are now doing rental payments is absolutely a direct result of the late stage capitalism hellscape caused by ballooning housing prices and stagnant wages. The fact that housing has been turned into a commodity to make rich people richer is disgusting.

All that aside, these services can be a much better alternative to a credit card when used responsibly and you plan well with your budget.

I did this too and I was still blocked. I ended up creating an account and was able to view content logged into an account. I really didn’t want a reddit account though.

Also not incognito.

Nope.

Is that why reddit was IP blocking people from seeing content even though they weren’t logged in?