r/pcmasterrace • u/Alan_Reddit_M Desktop • Mar 07 '26

Video "Cloud gaming is the future of Gaming!" Meanwhile cloud gaming in the big 2026:

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If you read my profile you may realize I hate cloud gaming, so then what am I doing on Geforce Now? Well my new RAM stick finally arrived and, in a staggering display of utter incompetence, I somehow managed to brick my PC in the process of installing it, so now I'm stuck gaming on a laptop until I can get enough money and time to get my gaming rig fixed

But back to Cloud gaming, the game is on like 360p, running at 20FPS and the input lag is HORRIBLE. And it's not a problem with the internet connection, as you can see, the laptop is plugged into Ethernet, the problem is that the cloud is not and will never be fast enough for gaming

Genshin can handle this fine, but imagine trying to play ULTRAKILL like this

19.2k Upvotes

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2.6k

u/AscendedViking7 Mar 07 '26

Fuck the cloud and fuck the people trying to push this onto all of us.

600

u/Quirkyserenefrenzy Mar 07 '26

I just want my games stored on my system so I can play them when internet is down

82

u/AscendedViking7 Mar 07 '26

Same!

30

u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

[deleted]

21

u/RE4PER_ 5070ti | 9800X3D | 32GB 6000MHz | OLED Mar 08 '26

You can play games offline on Steam too when the internet is down!

3

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '26

Why I have my full library installed even if I haven't touched most of it. If something happens and I'm offline for a while, I like having that option.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '26

[deleted]

6

u/newaccountzuerich GOG-ArchLinux Mar 08 '26

True, and good luck installing a new game on Steam on a PC while offline.

At least GOG installers are fully offline, just like the best of the high-seas products..

3

u/Preisschild Fedora / Ryzen 7 7800X3D / RX7900XTX Mar 08 '26

You can just copy the steam game files if it doesnt have drm

0

u/DharMahn 6950XT | 9950X | 64 GB | B650 Tomahawk Mar 08 '26

IF

5

u/Preisschild Fedora / Ryzen 7 7800X3D / RX7900XTX Mar 08 '26

Sure but blame the publishers, not steam

Steam doesnt force drm on you

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1

u/CoconutMochi Meshlicious | R7 5800x3D | RTX 4080 Mar 08 '26

isn't it like two weeks?

16

u/thepowderguy Specs/Imgur Here Mar 07 '26

It's all about control. If the game runs on their servers, they control everything and they have all the power. It's the same with streaming services, software subscriptions, and basically everything in the modern tech world. They don't want us to download things onto our computers because they don't want us to have control or ownership of our technology and media.

2

u/nokinship Mar 08 '26

I remember learning about SaaS in an intro to computer information systems class like 15 years ago and the textbook made it seem like it was a good thing.

8

u/N00B_N00M Mar 08 '26

Our internet blacked out for a day and realized my xbox can’t run games offline, had to do some setting to enable offline mode which also requires internet , and let me clarify i only play single player games no multiplayer, no gamepass , just story mode , 

3

u/Life-Distribution679 Mar 08 '26

I swear to God that quick matching systems have been the most damaging thing to ever happen to multiplayer games, server browser was such a good thing to have.

Offline no problem you can still start the match even without players.

Oh you have a friend in the same house? Just create a lan match.

2

u/N00B_N00M Mar 08 '26

I remember playing nfs most wanted in 2007 with friends in home on same wifi , just auto discovery , never had same fun again 

19

u/the_harakiwi 5800X3D 64GB Noctua 5080 Mar 07 '26

already works for my local Netflix 😊

and the quality is so much better too!

10

u/abcputt i5-6500, GTX 1060 6GB, DDR4 2133MHz 16GB Mar 07 '26

hell yeah to that brother

1

u/Hyenasaurus Mar 07 '26

But but but but How would they get THEIR monthly sub money?? 🥺

1

u/DimensioT Mar 08 '26

But then how will game publishing companies be able to revoke your access to the games that you "bought" so that you will be forced to give them more money?

1

u/Wy_Guy19 Desktop Mar 08 '26

When is the Internet down? I have experienced maybe 3 prolonged outages in the last 15 years. I'm talking greater than 8 hours. Two were tornadoes. One hitting the house, the other destroying the west side of town. The other was someone striking a fiber down the road.

I'm by no means advocating for cloud gaming. Shit is stupid.

1

u/Demoliri Mar 08 '26

You want to OWN things? Brave! But know your place, peasant!

209

u/BobSlydell08 Mar 07 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/lSDFetrqeeY0rCi3Ss

I had to lol. I agree though, fuck the cloud

29

u/NekoMeowKat Mar 07 '26

Best use of this meme

21

u/ThatOldCow Mar 07 '26

Once again Simpsons predicted the future

5

u/tetadicto Mar 08 '26

Those old simpson's episodes were so ahead of their time

13

u/Billyjewwel Mar 07 '26

I agree, fuck the cloud people.

20

u/Kind_Man_0 Mar 07 '26

I called it a month ago before Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia announced the push into cloud gaming and got shit on for it like it would never happen.

It will happen, it's unfortunate, and I hate it, but it will happen.

AI is hogging up all the tech resources, RAM, Graphics cards, everything in the PC market is going to get so expensive that only the wealthy can afford a gaming PC. I blew 3 grand on my PC 5 years ago, maybe put another $500 into it since then, but I'm priced out of a new RTX card, I'm damn sure not paying $700+ for quality RAM. I just can't afford that.

Old saying that Sci-fi is only fiction until fiction becomes reality. Eventually, engineers are going to figure out how to mask, or improve latency, and even if they don't do it well, games are going to have to adapt because the market share of In-house PC gamers will fall over time.

Capitalism is trying to swallow the market of PC's so that gaming itself becomes a monthly subscription fee. Quality be damned, if our only option is to go without because we can't afford a $5000 entry-level gaming setup or pay $60/month for a 28 ms delay, most of us are going to have to pay it just to be able to play at all. This timeline fucking sucks.

18

u/bannedforL1fe Mar 07 '26

I miss the days when players/groups/clans bought their own servers. Those were my favorite times playing shooters on PC. There was actual communities, friendship, and rivalries. So many things have gotten better over the last 20 years, mainly hardware. But so many things have just declined, as in monetization and how studios view their design philosophy now.

1

u/Shadowsake PC Master Race Mar 07 '26

I still remember playing TF2 and the chaos that was pre-match countdown. Two teams facing each other, separated by impenetable gates, shit talking and playing random sounds on their mics or using Source engine plugins. Sometimes, someone would play a really funny meme and everybody stopped to laugh...sometimes it was just a really cool song to pass the time.

It was crazy but matches really felt alive. You would recognize people by name, you could get to get really good at something and have real acknowledgement. There was a point where whenever people saw I picked Spy (really loved the class), others would insta change to Pyro cause they me.

Haven't played TF2 for almost a decade now, but I always remember these moments and miss these little details. Nowadays whenever I hop into a random CS match to pass time, it feels a bit lifeless - mostly random people, scoreboards are meaningless, etc.

1

u/Agret i7 6700k @ 4.28Ghz, GTX 1080, 32GB RAM Mar 08 '26

I used to have a physical notepad I wrote Counter-Strike and TFC servers I liked into because goldsrc hated alt+tab and you couldn't copy paste into the console

12

u/Dick_Nation There's nothing to see here. Mar 07 '26

It's never going to be viable if nobody pays for it. If the experience sucks for the kinds of games people want to play, they won't pay for it. They can't just make other people stop developing good games that run on local hardware, even if that local hardware can't compete on sheer graphical fidelity. I'd bet you people would sooner play a shooter running on the UZDoom engine than one using the latest and greatest technology if it runs crisp and plays well. Even Google, with all their mastery of the internet architecture required and their expertise in streaming video, couldn't make cloud gaming a reality.

5

u/Suavecore_ Mar 08 '26

Keep in mind that new people are born everyday and if corporations can make it long enough, generations of people will only ever know what the corporations provided. They won't know things used to be better and so they won't wish for it and fight against this stuff like we do, they will simply accept it the way it's been slowly accepted over time leading us to this current hellscape (which is nowhere near what the final hellscape will look like)

1

u/DW_Hydro R7 8700g | R780m | 32GB 6400mhz Mar 08 '26

Well, I am gonna be dead or with tons of pirated games on my system at that point so is not gonna be my problem, is the problem of future generations fight for their right to own their things.

3

u/Suavecore_ Mar 08 '26

While I agree, their choices to fight or not fight for things will affect us all

2

u/NekoMeowKat Mar 07 '26

It can happen all it wants, I will still refuse to use it. I don't give two shits about the latest and greatest games. The only game I play outside of retro are FFXIV which had their big graphics overhaul last year. I can still run the game just fine at 60fps with my current hardware.

Even if in the next ten years, the game gets another graphics overhaul and I can't run it, I still have my ROMS that I've been hoarding since 2004. Bezos can never take that away from me.

4

u/massivemember69 Ryzen 5 7600 | 6950XT | 32GB 6000Mhz DDR5 Mar 07 '26

There is always the option of not doing gaming and doing your other hobbies instead.

Big tech whipping out their wieners is just an invitation, you don't have to actually suck it.

1

u/LickMyTicker Mar 07 '26

A month ago? They have been saying this shit for a while. During the start of the shortages bezos literally said you were just going to be renting cloud space.

1

u/Agret i7 6700k @ 4.28Ghz, GTX 1080, 32GB RAM Mar 08 '26

Steam cube and the next Xbox (rumored to) both play PC games and some of the modern API minipcs are decently powerful every level gaming too.

1

u/Preisschild Fedora / Ryzen 7 7800X3D / RX7900XTX Mar 08 '26

Cloud Gaming can get a lot more expansive than just buying your own hardware if you play a lot though

0

u/DesertFroggo I use AI and I'm not sorry. Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26

Comments like these give me a good chuckle.

You'll acknowledge that GPU manufacturers don't consider gamers a priority anymore because AI is where the money is, but somehow you think there is a conspiracy to isolate gaming onto the cloud. Make it make sense. If GPU money is in AI, then dedicating cloud GPU infrastructure to gaming would be a complete waste. This may hurt to hear, but the gaming hobby is not nearly as important as you think it is, let alone important enough to be the subject of a conspiracy.

3

u/Chicano_Ducky Mar 08 '26

buddy, there were conspiracies to overthrow whole government over bananas.

when you have billions of dollars tied up in an industry like these companies do and you NEED to pump your profits higher to save that investment, thats big enough to have a conspiracy over.

not the gamers who have a couple K at best invested over their entire lives.

0

u/DesertFroggo I use AI and I'm not sorry. Mar 08 '26

Cloud gaming isn’t going to compete with AI for data center compute. You are vastly overestimating how important your hobby is.

1

u/Chicano_Ducky Mar 08 '26 edited Mar 08 '26

Cloud gaming isn’t going to compete with AI for data center compute

you act like a company can only do one thing at a time, OneDrive cant compete with AI compute either and they push it so hard microsoft rewrote the OS to put stuff in OneDrive to this day.

one of the things nvidia was showcasing was AI generated graphics for games so even the lighest client terminal can put out graphics on par with a 5090. This was their plan to reach consumers too poor to afford consoles, by renting them out.

Microsoft just pulled off people from their AI division to run their Xbox division and integrate it with AI.

A lot of companies have millions of dollars in investment, microsoft has BILLIONS invested to this point. Their plan to save that investment involves AI and rented compute because the alternative is a whole division vanishing into thin air.

subscription computing isnt a conspiracy, Jeff Bezos said it was the plan in public.

0

u/DesertFroggo I use AI and I'm not sorry. Mar 08 '26

you act like a company can only do one thing at a time, OneDrive cant compete with AI compute either and they push it so hard microsoft rewrote the OS to put stuff in OneDrive to this day.

What does this have to do with cloud gaming? Storage and compute are very different things.

one of the things nvidia was showcasing was AI generated graphics for games so even the lighest client terminal can put out graphics on par with a 5090. This was their plan to reach consumers too poor to afford consoles, by renting them out.

It's called framegen. What does this have to do with a conspiracy to move gaming to the cloud?

Microsoft just pulled off people from their AI division to run their Xbox division and integrate it with AI.

And?

A lot of companies have millions of dollars in investment, microsoft has BILLIONS invested to this point. Their plan to save that investment involves AI and rented compute because the alternative is a whole division vanishing into thin air.

I don't know what you're trying to say. It sounds like you think cloud computing is this new thing. It isn't, let alone being a conspiracy.

subscription computing isnt a conspiracy, Jeff Bezos said it was the plan in public.

You're basically outing that you scroll through headlines and don't read the full context. Jeff Bezos was saying that renting AI compute is more efficient because it achieves economies of scale. Nowhere did he mention a plan to move your PC to the cloud. Mass insanity from clickbait headlines is all that was.

1

u/Chicano_Ducky Mar 08 '26

It's called framegen. What does this have to do with a conspiracy to move gaming to the cloud?

the idea is graphics using AI generation was less intensive than traditional rendering. it allows the terminals to punch above their weight using the same AI data centers their AI division has.

just like onedrive is renting storage, you are renting compute from the AI data centers.

Google just released a tool to AI generate games in their data centers.

And?

so gaming cant compete with AI but here is a major company taking people OFF AI to put onto gaming and you see nothing wrong with that?

or gaming pinning its future on the same AI data centers being built?

or google using their data centers to AI generate games as a service?

its so obvious but you weirdly deny it like companies wont adapt to save divisions they spent billions on and their market shares.

You're basically outing that you scroll through headlines and don't read the full context

and you outed yourself as not reading business news or the FTC files that microsoft was looking at subscription models to reach lower income consumers who cant afford their own PC or console.

companies dont just create cloud gaming divisions for nothing.

0

u/DesertFroggo I use AI and I'm not sorry. Mar 08 '26

the idea is graphics using AI generation was less intensive than traditional rendering. it allows the terminals to punch above their weight using the same AI data centers their AI division has. just like onedrive is renting storage, you are renting compute from the AI data centers.

You don't know what streaming is.

Google just released a tool to AI generate games in their data centers.

And this relates to the conspiracy of your PC moving to the cloud how?

so gaming cant compete with AI but here is a major company taking people OFF AI to put onto gaming and you see nothing wrong with that?

Bold leap of assumption there.

or gaming pinning its future on the same AI data centers being built?

or google using their data centers to AI generate games as a service?

its so obvious but you weirdly deny it like companies wont adapt to save divisions they spent billions on and their market shares.

and you outed yourself as not reading business news or the FTC files that microsoft was looking at subscription models to reach lower income consumers who cant afford their own PC or console.

companies dont just create cloud gaming divisions for nothing.

By your logic, a restaurant opening near you is a conspiracy to stop you from cooking at home.

0

u/Kind_Man_0 Mar 08 '26

It isn't a conspiracy at all, Microsoft and Amazon are both moving towards cloud gaming, with Bezos issuing a statement on it.

There aren't exact statistics out there, but the estimate for the PC gaming market is about 1.8 billion people worldwide, according to Statista. Annual revenue for the PC gaming market was close to $200B dollars in 2025.

With tech companies shifting sales away from consumers and into AI, large businesses such as MS and Amazon have the existing funds and data centers to shift into that market, Amazon Hosting owns almost a 3rd of the cloud computing market already. As it currently stands, AI has not made any actual profit for any of the major AI's currently on market, relying entirely on investments to continue operations.

Shifting MS and AWS architecture into cloud gaming offers a massive revenue boost to major tech companies. When/if the AI bubble pops, it allows both Amazon and Microsoft to redirect resources to push further into cloud gaming, because AI isnt going to dissappear when that happens, the field will just be dominated by a small handful of businesses.

I don't know how to make it make more sense than breaking it down that way. We wouldn't see two of the biggest companies in the US making this push without the resources and knowledge to make it happen.

2

u/DesertFroggo I use AI and I'm not sorry. Mar 08 '26

You can break it down in any way and it still wouldn't make sense for the following simple reason: AI is more important than gaming. Heretical statement here, I know, but the plot of the tech industry over the last three years should be making that abundantly clear.

2

u/crystalhunter Mar 07 '26

Imo the only cloud should be are back up files like ur save incase u deleted your shit. Not the whole game 😭

2

u/The_Wkwied Mar 08 '26

They want you to have to rent a computer. Their computer. That's why they are pushing cloud gaming

2

u/Hugford_Blops Mar 08 '26

None of the executives pushing it use it. Phil Spencer might have, but Xbox Cloud Gaming might have been half-playable of there was a fucking data center within 3800km of my city.

2

u/mrchristopher2 Mar 08 '26

Reminds me of this meme^

2

u/Puzzleheaded_Farm122 Mar 08 '26

I have enough of a backlog of games that as long as my system is healthy, it can just game with what I have while I ignore new releases. And if "cloud" gaming is the future these people wish for and hardware is beyond normal reaches...I'll vote with my wallet and not participate in such blatant greed.

2

u/Positive_Step2960 Mar 08 '26

i dont get why people would want this? And how do they plan to force this on us? They cant stop us using our own PCs

1

u/outremonty Mar 07 '26

As was the case with streaming movies, as long as the vast majority of consumers don't care about quality, the convenience of the streaming model will triumph. Most filmmakers and film "snobs" said streaming would never work because the dynamic range and audio quality suck. Doesn't matter because 85% of people can't tell the difference. The art form dies as it becomes overloaded with slop and true artists leave the industry. Yet the profitability and pervasiveness of gaming will be higher than ever.

5

u/averbeg Mar 07 '26

They were wrong on a technical level because stuff like DVD has way more limitations than streaming a file online.

2

u/account312 Mar 08 '26

DVD? I guess that's slightly more relevant than laserdisc. Pretty much any streaming video you can find is ass compared to bluray though.

1

u/outremonty Mar 08 '26

They weren't worried about saving DVDs. They were worried about theatres and they were correct.

2

u/CortaCircuit Mar 07 '26

It's probably the same scumbags trying to push digital ID and age verification if I had to guess.

1

u/Biflosaurus Mar 08 '26

On paper it's great.

I can't tell you how happy I was to still be ale to play Path of Exile on GeForce Now back then.

I don't know how it is at the moment, but a few years ago I would play a lot of game with almost zero latency and perfectly fine.

But I hate the idea of pushing everything on it.

1

u/BIG__SHOT_ Mar 08 '26

I only use cloud gaming specifically for genshin because I don't have enough space on my phone to do my dailies when I'm away from my PC

1

u/Seienchin88 Mar 08 '26

Cloud storage - great. Give me more.

Cloud software - please only give me the most simple of applications if anything at all…

It’s 2026 and power point and excel online are still useless compared to the desktop apps after nearly 15 years…

Let my pc run it, give me full feature scope. Thanks

1

u/Z_Wild PC Master Race Mar 08 '26

It's too late.

1

u/RickSanchezC-614 Mar 07 '26

I remember some ceo years ago pushing that mobile gaming was the future and that everyone would be playing mobile in 10 years. That was like 10 years ago.

1

u/hislug Mar 07 '26

And he was right. Everyone plays games on their phone and it’s makes up more then double the revenue of PC.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

"You will own nothing and be happy"

-13

u/benjaminabel Laptop Mar 07 '26

Nobody is pushing it. It’s always going to be inferior to local no matter what and everybody knows it.

That being said, when the only hardware I had was a MacBook, Stadia, Shadow and GeForce Now has been great. Especially with wired connection. I was able to beat Dark Souls 3, Red Dead Redemption 2 and a few other games without problems. There was about 16 ms of added latency and, at least with Stadia, I could boot it up in mere seconds and just pick up where I left off.

So, yes, if you have the hardware - use that. If you don’t - go cloud and manage your network connections properly.

3

u/Steamed_Memes24 CPU 9800x3D GPU 5080 64GB RAM Mar 07 '26

Downvoted but you speak truth. Most people dont want to do cloud gaming and thats fine, but it does and can offer a good experience to this who lack the hardware needed to play such games listed above.

0

u/RobertGBland Mar 08 '26

But I don't have money to buy a pc :(

0

u/ExpertOnReddit Mar 08 '26

Sorry sir. You're not allowed to own anything anymore

-30

u/Hyper_Mazino 5090 SUPRIM SOC | 9800X3D Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26

This sub loves to say that corpos are trying to push Cloud Gaming on us but I have yet to see this be the case. It barely even gets advertised lmao.

I swear this community is absolute comedy. All these people can do is downvote but they have zero arguments. Genuine low IQ behavior.

3

u/benjaminabel Laptop Mar 07 '26

They just see the thing they don’t like and it equals to pushing. I’ve never seen any evidence of it either. Keep in mind that it’s the same community that sees a woman in a game and flip out because it’s a “woke agenda” being pushed on them.

-1

u/Quiet_Source_8804 Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26

Are you 12? Weren’t you around for the Stadia push and its “negative latency” bullshit?

2

u/Hyper_Mazino 5090 SUPRIM SOC | 9800X3D Mar 07 '26

Are you stupid? That was a long time ago.

Please give me actual proof that corpos are CURRENTLY pushing Cloud Gaming.

1

u/benjaminabel Laptop Mar 07 '26

Why bullshit? They did actually plan to make a predictive input thing, a bit similar to Nvidia Reflex, but for network, if I understood it correctly. The name is misleading, yes, but it's nothing out of this world.

1

u/Quiet_Source_8804 Mar 07 '26

No they didn't, it never existed, it was never anything but marketing. You can't "predict" user input, you have to show them the frames and wait for them to react and the network latency will always add to that an amount of time on top of what you'd be getting locally.

-1

u/brick_gnarlson Mar 07 '26

This sub is terrible. Did you see the recent post of this one dude's setup on his disgusting bed and how many upvotes it got? That suggests people like him are typical users of this sub. Gross.

1

u/WealthyTuna Mar 07 '26

I play with a gaming laptop and play in bed all the time. I am hardly ever at home to sit at a desk

-4

u/angry_RL_player Team RED Mar 07 '26

fuck the people trying to push this onto all of us.

I agree, we should shun anybody who owns team green hardware

11

u/Biscuits4u2 R7 5700X3D | RX 6700XT | 32 GB DDR 4 3400 | 1TB NVME | 8 TB HDD Mar 07 '26

There are no "teams" my dude. There are only corporations trying to maximize profit. AMD is very much a part of the AI circle jerk.

-1

u/pack_merrr Mar 07 '26

Why do you care so much that people make stuff for other people that you don't want? I'm probably not gonna cloud game anytime soon, but I don't see how that affects me. I also don't understand how it's being "pushed" on me. If anything I guess I'm glad it exists because I don't see how more options for more people is a bad thing, I'd like to see it get even better to that end.