Control and censorship. Imagine a developer distributing an apk that Google doesn’t like, let’s say, emulators, ad-blockers, VPNs (if they become illegal in some places), piracy apps or many others. Just remove their verified status and voilà.

This is awful. Google is quickly becoming a new walled garden, Apple-style.

Not that I don’t agree with your sentiment, but patents (technical methods to build machines, do stuff, etc.) are different from copyright (stories, characters, etc… the one Disney has exploited for decades).

I was born in the same year, 1976, and I really don’t feel the same way. Pretty much every era has bangers and also really bad games.

I have really good memories from the '80s (games like Pitfall II or the MSX Konami games), the '90s (playing MUDs with my college pals, the classic SNES JRPGs like Chrono Trigger or the classic PC CRPGs like Baldur’s Gate and its ilk), the '00s (games like Silent Hill 2, Morrowind or GTA: San Andreas), the '10s (pretty much every FromSoft game from that decade, NieR:Automata or the Rocksteady Batman games) and the '20s (games like Elden Ring, Hades, etc.). And many more games I didn’t mention.

Some decades have been better than others, but there are incredible games in all of them.

And additionally, China takes advantage and the EU starts doing more business with them.

China tried to keep itself very neutral in the Ukraine/Russia war (at least on the outside), and it even distanced itself from Putin in the last months. It would be a perfect chance for them to strengthen their economic ties with the EU.

Trump has really freaked up the soft power balance of the world. It was slowly decaying before, but he really pushed the Turbo button.

Nvidia Riva TNT2 M64

With Dune I had no problem. One of my favorite books, actually. But Ulysses… oh god. That was a hard book to read (and not finish).