Why you can’t buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy
I&#x27;m legitimately worried about the long term future of my hobby (PC gaming) at this point.<p>Prices like this have a cascade effect because when less people can afford to build a PC and&#x2F;or upgrade there&#x27;s less incentive for developers and publishers to spend time on the platform. Consoles are shielded by the ability of Sony and Microsoft to take losses which will be absorbed by online fees and higher game prices but no such cushion exists for PCs (this is a strength to be sure, but a double edged sword in this respect).<p>PC gamers have spent years disproving the image of PCs as prohibitively expensive and now it&#x27;s coming crashing down due to people in a faux gold rush wasting hardware and energy. I wish it would stop, but I don&#x27;t know how much of the damage to the hobby can be repaired.<p>Of course there are other factors. Machine learning is eating up cards, smartphones and tablets are eating RAM, and I don&#x27;t doubt there&#x27;s price fixing. But ML is at least useful to humanity (sometimes), smartphones and tablets are tangible products, and price fixing can be investigated and punished.<p>I&#x27;m relatively shielded from this as I just built a high end machine (i7-7700, 1080ti, 32GB DDR4) that will last a while but the next time I want to build a machine might be painful. While I would probably pay the price, others will not, and the hobby will suffer.