PCG Article Discussion for February 2026

[neogunhero]

I'm sad Deadlock is 'just' a MOBA—not because I don't like them, but because I'm in love with Valve's lore and characters enough to want any other game instead

An RPG, an MMO, an FPS—I'll take anything, man.

www.pcgamer.com

I feel the same way about Deadlock. I haven't played as much as the author, but I have the same love/hate relationship with it. I have been a lifelong Valve fanboy so I'll glaze them: they've made an absolutely amazing fictional world full of intriguing lore, great character designs, such unique artistry that you can tell Valve has poured their hearts over, yet... it's a MOBA. I hate MOBAs. Hate is strong word, lets say I have little to zero interest in playing a MOBA for very long at all. I have never found the genre engaging or fun to play. Strange because I generally do like RTS games, this is basically a different flavor of that, yet I just have always had this strong dislike for the genre.

I wish they would do something different with it, but with this huge cast of characters it seems the only options are a MOBA or a hero shooter, neither of which I'd like to play. I'd even play a fighting game with these characters.

I have played Deadlock and I can admire all the great aspects of it while not being a fan of the gameplay. In typical MOBA fashion, players take ages to kill, respawning takes forever, you're always traveling to where the action is when you do spawn in, it's just not the most engaging gameplay to my eyes.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I hope this is what happens. This bubble bursts, leaving all of these AI companies/shells of the former companies left with countless bits of hardware, and they start slinging them out at dirt cheap prices. Kind of like how corporations get new laptops every two years, they send all the old laptops to businesses to clean them, then they get resold on eBay for pretty cheap. It'll be like a large scale, international version of that, hopefully. I just hate seeing my favorite hobby that has been a part of my life since childhood become increasingly out of reach of my budget.

Sadly, this is not going to happen. AI adoption is skyrocketing, which is why there is a RAM shortage. People are sending in billions of prompts every day, and AI is beginning to catch up with search engines in usage. The only hope is that AI can be made vastly more efficient, which is the current push. For the large models, generative learning is no longer feasible, so now programmers have taken over.