| Angelus said: I honestly have a hard time understanding all the people that always start moaning when something has an always online requirement. It's 2023...which one of all these people, voicing their never ending frustration on some forum, twitter, reddit, or wherever else online ISN'T actually online 24/7 on pretty much any device they own? It's such a non-issue for the overwhelming majority of gamers. |
It isn't an issue for me and hasn't been for about a decade now when I got better internet. But I do have a friend who is still on about 1.5 mbit/s DSL, which isn't really fast enough for any online only game to work. So I do understand the plight of these people who live in rural areas where there is no option for cable or fiber optic internet. It's more people than you might think, a Microsoft study in 2019 showed that 162m Americans still lacked broadband internet at that time, while a FCC report in 2020 said that 21m Americans live in areas where there is no option for high speed internet at all. And that is just America, rural areas in many other top 20 internet speed countries still suffer from poor internet options, while gamers in emerging gaming markets in South America and Africa in particular are also often without high speed internet.
There is some hope for these people now that Elon Musk's Starlink low orbit satellite internet is a thing, but it is still a very pricey option with a $600 initial setup fee and a $110 a month charge, too much for poorer folks, and it has yet to roll out to some parts of the world including half of the US and most of Africa and Asia.
There was also some talk about finding a way to increase DSL speeds over copper phone lines to make DSL capable of meeting the broadband definition, but I haven't heard if they have made any progress on that front.
Last edited by shikamaru317 - on 04 February 2023
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