Youtube user Baseball Card Stories also expressed so much of how wrong the whole system is in a very concise video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8t9XHnIp9w , content warning for goofy AI pictures sometimes during the video lol), and he expressed how for him cards are first and foremost a tactile experience that has to do with paper, embossing, even the smell (he shows cards from the late 1800s which were sold with tobacco, still smelling of it).

I can see why some would ignore tactility for a card, since you can at least see it whole no matter how you spin it inside a plastic slab. But to suffocate a whole volume of a book inside of it is genuinely dumbfounding. I cannot wait for this fad to die, but I’m afraid there’s a good chance it’ll just ramp up in volume, in the near future.

edit: forgive me for the triple comment, for some reason my message would get sent as soon as I tried to change tab on my phone.

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I understand your point and while it might not follow the definition of a scam, it surely threads dangerously closes to it when the biggest and most used company by TCG players has been recently known for buying cards from customers only to re-grade them up and sell it themselves on the market, creating a vortex of conflict of interest.

And I do understand the activity of rating, but I still fail to see how truly meaningful it is if all the companies have such wide margins of error that they’ll give wildly different ratings to the same card if sent back again. It would make more sense if the company would limit itself to a) certifying that the card is not fake, and b) to note its main defects on the tag.

Grading from 1 to 10 is obviously a tactic to continuosly play with the market, creating scarcity when it is most convenient, and to enable the gambling addiction of customers who think that this time it’ll surely get a grade 10; and so the customer has to pay for: shipping, fees (which are crazy expensive, and they get higher if your card is more expensive for some reason), the card holder made for shipping sold by the company, and a box also usually sold by the company.

People can do what they want with their money, if this is how one wants to collect, shall they do so. But when the whole market and felt value revolves around grading from a handful of companies, something is fishy. There are countless kids in the world convinced that the rare card they just got from their Pokémon booster is worthless if they don’t spend a hundred bucks grading it.

You’re right, I worded myself weirdly. What I was trying to say is that, while I’m very happy to see this kind of effort, I worry since it is easy for the pop world (be it music or something else) to lean into the type of black-or-white virtue signaling that stars (or rather, the way management usually phrases things) are known for, moreoften to appease to a certain “leftie” public that cannot wait to spend the buckaroos as long as the event organizers pinky promise that everything they’re doing will save the planet.

I am a big fan of live music and I wouldn’t want to gatekeep the experience, I just hope its general public won’t lose focus on the fact that they have to keep doing their part even on service that are accessory to the event itself. Apart from that, I am with you with the fact that it is undoubtedly a positive news to report on.

Celebrities’ managers always want their clients to shine as The Pioneer in whatever they do nowadays, so the sensationalistic head title is not surprising. Plus, big events like these can’t really be 100% green by definition, since so many will still use a car to reach it.

Unrelated to the topic, but

led by a strictly limited physical collector’s release created with game preservation at its heart

This sentence is so funny. How is a limited edition made for people who want to pay extra and have shiny object on their shelves working towards game preservation in any form? It’s so funny when they try to play “here, have more disposable plastic and pay 50 extra bucks for it! I swear you’re ALSO doing it for a good cause!”

While I agree that @Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world’s data isn’t exactly correct in covering the percentage of games that can be played, their sentiment is not so random.

For example:

• Both the PS4 and the PS5 in the database you linked show that roughly 25-28% of games will require a patch to be played without “bugs that are either too severe or too many to provide a mostly flawless experience”. That is almost one game out of three that, without internet connection/dead servers, will live in an odd limbo in which you own a disc with unpatched/crude software. One out of ten will be useless plastic. In comparison, a GOG installer can be re-downloaded as soon as a game is patched, and you can store it away locally once again.
• Often, buying games at launch means you don’t have a complete package for the title, which nowadays comes in the form of DLCs and season passes. Those are not registered in any way onto the disc (naturally), and are only tied to your account. If Sony closes down services that check that you own such content, you don’t have access to it anymore.

One could argue that Sony’s going at great lengths to keep services alive; for example, the PS3 still lets you download and update content. One also can, however, easily imagine that there will be a day when such service is not considered profitable enough, since you soon won’t be able to buy games for it anymore. What then? Can we realistically expect Sony to keep servers and checks alive for a console that does not generate any new profit whatsoever? I honestly doubt so.