Gears of War 5 is $10 on Steam rn.
Halo MCC is also on sale.

^Great deal. Too bad Gears 4 is only available from the Microsoft Store on PC (btw, it's also on sale), meaning that if you care about the story, you're f*cked.

Yeah, I remember an article in a German videogame magazine (PC Games 8/2000 iirc) in the early 2000's that Football games (I will not call it with that abomination of a word that soccer is) that the games weren't even allowed to make them look more similar to their real-life counterpart, and the question was even so big that some players with a different skin color or being bald were possibly not allowed to have their skin color or their baldness portrayed in the games.

Then came FIFPro, which changed the situation to something similar to the NFL, where most players fall under a common license, but some stars cost extra.

Imagine the situation would become like before FIFPro again, and the models wouldn't be allowed to look like the real players anymore unless they pay for every single player they want to depict in the games...

You know what else is unacceptable? Scalper prices in e-tailers. Just have a look at Big Navi price at Alternate.de:

https://www.alternate.de/Grafikkarten/Big-Navi/html/listings/1605171473691?lk=29643&sort=PRICE&order=ASC&hideFilter=false

The cheapest 6800 is a staggering 829€, the cheapest 6800XT comes at 949€. At that point, we're pretty much at the MSRP for the RX 6900 already...

NVidia's RTX cards are also massively inflated there. The cheapest 3070 is listed at "only" 579€ - but if you want something that's actually available you'll have to shell out over 750€ for a 3070. 3080 prices start at 819€ and quickly go over 900€ and even over 1000€ for some (The Gigabyte AORUS Extreme comes at a crazy 1149€). Oh, and none of them is actually available. Funnily enough, the 3090 is already available for 1799€ and even has some cheaper cards than that one (though all not available), so not too much over MSRP for that card.

Essh that's horrible. Shit should be illegal

Alright I gotta ask. And this isn't a knock against AMD but rather AIBs. What in the hell is going on with AIB pricing?

3080 FE: $700
3080 TUF: $700
https://www.newegg.com/asus-geforce-rtx-3080-tuf-rtx3080-10g-gaming/p/N82E16814126453?Description=3080%20TUF&cm_re=3080_TUF-_-14-126-453-_-Product

6800 XT Reference: $650
RX 6800 XT TUF: $810????
https://www.newegg.com/asus-radeon-rx-6800-xt-tuf-rx6800xt-o16g-gaming/p/N82E16814126476

6800 XT version even comes with a single HDMI 2.1 where as the 3080 TUF comes with 2 HDMI 2.1 ports.

And the biggest wtf is

Why does this 6800 cost more than a reference 6800XT?

https://www.newegg.com/asus-radeon-rx-6800-tuf-rx6800-o16g-gaming/p/N82E16814126478?Description=rx%206800%20xt&cm_re=rx_6800%20xt-_-14-126-478-_-Product

Here are my picks, I admit I chose some of them for shits and giggles.

What's the point of a Steam sale when literally no one has a GPU to even play games?

I wish I was desperate enough to buy a Gigabyte or EVGA card.

Thank you. You've given me a couple of ideas. I think I'll go with Among Us for "Better with Friends", given how popular it has become (and also because Fall Guys can't be voted in that category).

The extra cost that some AIBs ask for their models can sometimes be utterly ridiculous, specially given that most of the time the only thing they bring is a different (but not always better) cooler and at most a 5% overclock that rarely improves the performance of the card.

Anyway, talking about AIB cards, here are the first reviews of the custom 6800 series cards: https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-radeon-rx-6800-custom-series-review-roundup

And we got a first look at some custom designs for Nvidia's 3060Ti: https://videocardz.com/newz/evga-zotac-kuroutoshikou-geforce-rtx-3060-ti-graphics-cards-leaked