For years it never ceases to amaze me that the PS3 interface is so clean, nice, and pleasant to use. I was excited to hook it up tonight but was disappointed.
I now can’t use the network without scanning a QR code in my phone or going to some website. I am also really upset that my PS3 updated to include bloatware that I can’t remove (YouTube and Amazon, Spotify, can’t recall). Like, how did they just enshittify something I’ve already owned for 20 years? F.
If I don’t find a vendor who has no tracking / parasitic practices soon, I’m just going to stop gaming. I’ve already found Steam sending a million queries that I have to block. They forced me to be online to play a game after playing offline was acceptable just a week before. I remember just owning games and being left alone and I miss it.
First Reddit became toxic and unusable, news became mudslinging garbage, they are trying to ruin Linux with age verification, and now they are even reaching back to enshittify 20 year old gaming consoles. I just want to go live in the woods at this point. We can’t address issues faster than they enshittify the entire world.
Anyways, anyone know a deshittified gaming hack?
Games on GOG are DRM-free, so while you can use GOG Galaxy for features such as cloud saves, you can also launch games independently.
Technically, you could stick to anything from the PS2 and back. Or go indie
My PS3’s too new to support CFW so never got to check, but maybe CFW (not HEN) allows removing unwanted additions? Or maybe even downgrade the system version?
Alternatively, maybe dump your games with the PS3 and play on an emulator on PC if you got the option.
More generally for gaming, DRM-free’s usually the least enshittified/privacy-friendly imo, as once you downloaded the installer, zip, etc., the game doesn’t care where it came from.
The biggest store for DRM-free stuff is GOG, though you’ll quickly learn they’re great at making PR disasters if you can live with that. And for platforms like GOG, Itch.io and Steam, there are tools for downloading through the terminal that are as isolated as they get. For the 3 platforms, they’re gogrepoc, itch-dl and SteamCMD, the last one official and the other two leveraging APIs.
And for Stean specifically though, do mind DRM’s a hit or a miss, and some times both. Also, their Linux version of SteamCMD needs to be installed system-wide, so I’d suggest getting the Windows version and running through a VM and/or Wine, memorizing the syntax for downloading builds from specific systems.
And uf you must use a launcher, Heroic Launcher abd Playnite are pretty good, neither official products so neither following the design choices of the platforms they support.
I’m saving this comment so I can check those terminal tools later.
Also, I completely forgot to check emulators. If those work, I could just ditch the console and bloatware at this point.
PS3 is notoriously hard to code for. I think someone recently made an emulator that works with a lot of games, but I haven’t heard anything at all about it since.
Played some of my games on RPCS3 some years ago, may 5 years or so, and they played fine.
Only bad part that comes to mind is that my computer then was a potato by the emulated games’ standards, meaning multiple played slow.
Edit: for phone games
f-droid or look here for games (its just an usorted list, good luck. but there are good games there, just maybe not what you looked for) https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/de/reports/list/?filter=no_trackers
If you’re buying a game off an online storefront, there will always be some level of tracking. That in mind, what you probably want is something like GOG or Itch.io where you just download and play the games. You don’t need any launchers, you just download the installer for whichever game you bought and that’s yours, no DRM. I think the only way you’ll truly be able to have absolutely zero tracking, you’d have to be buying only games on console, bought in person with cash, with the console exclusively offline. In this case, if you’re on anything past the PS3 generation, you’ll be greeted with a lot of games that will not function without downloading an update. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for something like Steam to track some data though. I’ve got no issue with it tracking how long I’ve played a game, or tracking what kinds of games I buy.
