Hodgepodge – To Tax or Not to Tax (Billionaires), Other California Issues, Gaming Layoff Explosive Diarrhea Inevitability and Pies and Chicken

Continuing with this daily random thoughts/observations part of my afternoon, it’s another edition of Hodgepodge. Today, I’m going to look at some gaming industry situations with rumored layoffs, my own Diablo 2: Resurrected ponderings, low morale at Meta right after the Zuck told everyone to be happy and have fun, Firefox’s roadmap and ambitions, taxes/minimum wage in two different states, a little bit of pro-wrestling relevance with a small discussion on the upcoming Dark Side of the Ring return as well as that rapscallion executive Mark Shapiro over at TKO and mix this all up with some literal thoughts for food to end things.

Rumored Gaming Industry Layoffs

The word layoffs in 2026 seems common place and strikes fear but is not to be unexpected in the turbulent economics of a world that has been infected by the Mad Human Disease that struck it around the same time COVID hit. The latest industry that might be seeing big numbers come up is none other than gaming. Sony and Microsoft in particular are being cited as keys to watch out for as the gaming world shudders. Comments in the article and reddit point out that the insane budgets for blockbuster games are not meeting the results companies desire. Furthermore, people have pointed out that the typical key target for games in the younger generation have moved towards mobile, F2P, gatcha/microtransaction heavy types. On the other hand, prices for these so-called AAA games have equally skyrocketed and attempted to add things like seasonal passes to be competitive especially if they’re live service oriented.

My take is that this is a normalized pattern. I’ve seen some of those game trailers and many seem more impressive as a film short than an actual game. The market itself is simply too competitive and I doubt most people have time to really dive into anything that last more than an hour or two during their busy schedule on a given day at best. Large companies like Sony and Microsoft are going to face stiff competition from small studios that can move faster without the bureaucratic red tape and strict KPI management practices that infect the larger spots.

But if you think about it, gaming is just entertainment and entertainment has become a luxury in 2026 because of the general increase in lifestyle. Most places have sought to deal with budget issues and shareholder demands by raising prices. In turn, consumers are forced to heavily consider their priorities even more. It gets especially dicey when basics like food, gas and housing itself have become outrageous in cost.

Let me take Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred as a prime example of where I think Blizzard completely fucked up their pricing model. To me Blizzard already had insulted most people with Vessel of Hatred where people overreacted on the initial $60 price tag (it was less but they probably saw the premium editions). They didn’t learn their lesson in a more lenient time but decided to swing their tiny dicks by making LoH at a $40 price tag. In conjunction with that, they released the Diablo 2: Resurrected Warlock DLC at at a whopping $25. That’s easily $65 before tax for any Diablo fan.

The majority of my friends opted for the cheaper Warlock DLC but said that they would’ve bought LoH if it were $15. I’m guessing by the end of the year, especially after whatever Blizzard supposedly will announce at BlizzCon later this year, Lord of Hatred will come down in price because people won’t be buying it for the remainder of the year and that their only chance at making big money was through a surprise announcement at a gaming show. But I find these tactics just more reason to distance myself in the future from the company because it simply sets up more bad precedence without even going into the lack of creativity shown in the expansion (which barely had any actual new content that was worth more than $15). I think if Blizzard had priced it at $15, they would’ve gained a lot more sales and the goodwill of the people for a short period. Instead, it’s business as usual for them.

But I expect that Blizzard is going to feel the heat down the line because of these tactical errors. I think Diablo 4 has some bad foundation that’s causing it to be difficult for them to maintain and build on top of. Also, they simply can’t compete against GGG’s Path of Exile 2 at this stage. Even if I haven’t decided to play that game, I can see from various streamers just how much more content is offered at nothing. So Blizzard is going to probably take a nasty fall being under the Microsoft umbrella and I think Diablo 4 is going to be in a lot of trouble, despite all the various promises the executives have stated. Things change and I don’t see better numbers for this game and the complexity of the engine was a horrible misstep, which is symptomatic in this industry.

Diablo 2: Resurrected Thoughts

Although I don’t talk much about Diablo 2 in general, I will say that occasionally I might pop in and give it a whirl. A while back I figured on picking this title up on discount but didn’t progress far. I started up multiple characters and died once, losing all my gear apparently. That incident demotivated me and I probably quit for something else (better) at the time. Well, a few days ago a bud of mine started playing again and I mentioned it. I think he’s doing non-ladder so I told him I’d like to join. But I found out my highest character was a level 22 Sorceress and I’m sure that’s the one who ended up dying.

This time around, I started playing a paladin that I only got to level 9 or so. While I gave this character a spin, I honestly wasn’t having any fun. Maybe the graphics, even with the update, appear dated, the game play is painful, the inventory management still sucks and my hand/wrist ended up hurting badly. The worst part was how impossible it was to see anything. I hated the map overlay, the difficulty of trying to pick up little worthless items and just the general dark atmosphere. If you need to clear a zone, the slow moving monsters hidden in poorly conceived walls or trees make it terrible. Also, the skill tree setup is something I think only certain nostalgic fans must enjoy.

But I think this game honestly sucks. I remember playing it for a while when it was initially released (the OG D2) and that was fine back then because the standards were a lot lower while I wasn’t as broken down physically. Not to mention I used a trainer and didn’t really care for grinding since I had a lot more time and less sense about the direction my life would go. I can see why some people continue to flock towards it as they probably were the ones in junior high or high school that played hours in LAN style parties. For myself, I simply moved on to games like Diablo 3 or ones with better interfaces.

And people might ridicule me for how I can confidently say that I prefer Wizardry 6 or Bard’s Tale 3 over Diablo 2. Here’s the reality though: I can play those older, turn based games from the comfort of my couch. Diablo 2 I’m still stuck at my desk wrestling with a mouse and dealing with lame, dark graphics.

But it got me thinking about the whole ARPG genre and what might’ve gone wrong back then. I remember when Ultima started moving more towards a real time game how complex it had become. Ultima 7 was the worst offender because they dumbed down the strategic game play and made you upgrade your PC to a 386. Does that situation sound familiar? I think as games aggressively tried to up the ante, the downside was increasing the requirements, which meant this battle for upgrades. The game play itself mostly is graphical but the interactions haven’t improved that much. So maybe the problem isn’t so much the need for better graphics and these fancy particle physics engines but just more content for simpler games. Another article talked about the conversion to turn based games. I’m wondering if we’ll see a trend there because of how people probably don’t want to deal with the ADHD catered game play that more contemporary games have moved towards.

I mean if you look at Diablo 4 the game is about bullshit numbers and the only challenges are bugged mechanically fucked up boss fights. None of these things would matter if the game adopted a turn based solution where people could theorycraft and not deal with stupid multipliers and nonsensical math. But I would play such a game on a phone (not Immortal) if it were turn based and done better.

Tech Talk

CTO Speaks on Low Moral at Meta

I find this hilarious after I mentioned the mandated “fun” by the Zuck the other day where the CTO for Meta mentions the low morale. Well, no shit sherlock! Maybe back in 2007 or so, Facebook was trying to accomplish something and had a major focus on engineering. You’d hear about their version control culture with karma, the hack-a-thons, working with Ford in figuring out how to bring social to the auto industry, their contributions to the Open Source movement with things like Hack or Mysql. Collaboration and the open floor plans were revolutionary means of working especially for a young, highly motivated workforce. Instead, you have a burnt out group who are only about numbers because the company has adopted the Goldman Sach’s policy of the bottom 10% layoff scenario. Worse yet you’re forcing them to adopt AI when there is no vision for how AI should be used outside of that they must use it while giving some assclown fuckface a huge sum in extracting him from another company before he’s even proven one iota of what he could can concretely do to improve AI at Meta. Then there’s been people who describe the AI engineering group as a “gulag.” Considering that AI ought to be one of the most sought after, highest paid positions out there, I find this hilarious and all those sell outs who decide that money is everything deserve all the stress, the sleepless nights and every pang out guilt that hopefully gives each of them ulcers. I can’t be sympathetic for a place where theft not only is encouraged but has been celebrated and turned into a part of the American pop culture with The Social Network movie. So fuck them and everything that they’re worth.

Firefox Shares Roadmap

Firefox has a neat roadmap of their future. Their Nova is updating the layout and people say that the settings aspect is quite good. Privacy is at the forefront with adblocking/trackers built in, passkey support, VPN (for mobile), containers for different logins on a given site, translation built in, PDF editing, etc. It looks quite good and might even convince me to update my current version on my main laptop. I definitely will give this a shot on my work Mac just to see how it goes.

One reason I typically keep my browsers out of date is that I don’t necessarily trust Mozilla nor most browsing companies. I think when Firefox forced all plugins to stop it killed my old browser. Admittedly, that browser had issues but I didn’t visit many places to make me concerned. I was more concerned about Mozilla as a company and the fact that Firefox has become annoying with nearly trying to force updates. And while people may argue that it’s for security purposes, it also can cause issues where a trusted plugin might stop working or that they may simply decide to stop supporting something. So I’m very wary about using the “latest and greatest” of any kind of software.

Another article mentioned the roadmap but pointed out how Firefox is losing numbers too. My guess is that Chrome, Safari and possibly Edge make it harder for Firefox to gain traction especially on Mobile. However, with the upcoming Chrome update in ending support for adblockers, I’m guessing there will be an inevitable jump back to Firefox. One thing that has been mentioned by the Firefox update is the speed increase. The only places where Firefox has issues are YouTube, Google Docs and Facebook (for me at least). I’m dead sure this is intentional.

For me though, none of these apps really matter anymore. YouTube has become mostly reaction videos with low decent content and tons of AI crap. Facebook might as well be dead for me except for a single group that I belong to. And I have alternate pieces of software than Google Docs that I’m not forced to update. So if Google ends up shooting itself in the foot by adblockers, not muc really changes on my behalf because I doubt I’ll use other browsers, even on mobile. And for that matter, anyone reading this ought to swap too (even though I am using AdSense here but I still have some level of integrity)

State Level BS

Oklahoma Votes to Block Minimum Wage Hike

Let me start by saying I really don’t enjoy talking about politics because it’s not only a touchy subject but I get upset and find that it’s a waste of time. This one is something where I feel like there’s a this massive trickle down effect taking place all over the place. And while I don’t live in Oklahoma nor would I ever want to, I have to agree with the stop on the minimum wage hike. In California, we’ve seen that the consumers ended up taking part of the brunt of this with fast food costing a lot more. Along with that, various places have shut down where companies are blaming the inability to pay their employees being an issue (which probably is partly caused by the general rise in cost of fast food). While fast food has been notorious as being a low margins type of business, one thing it’s never truly been for certain is a skilled labor type of spot.

Of course, minimum wage goes beyond fast food but I generally see this type of role as being the bottom of the barrel when it comes to employment. In the case of fast food spots (which I tend to target mostly because it’s the only business where I have interactions with this type of personnel regularly), I don’t expect much from these people except one thing: my order. My expectations are so low when it comes to fast food that I already know what I’m getting. When you add missing items, cold/stale food, wrong things, you get kinda pissed after a while. Maybe back before fast food became ridiculously overpriced, I wasn’t as unhappy by these situations because the cost matched the output. Now, the attitudes haven’t changed much but the price has. It’s almost impossible for me to want to avoid hitting up any fast food ever again when the service itself is so low and apathetic half the time.

But I think that’s kind of the toxic nature of these types of jobs. It’s problematic when some of that labor were from say a certain ethnic group or economic/cultural background (to put it mildly) and forced to accept this type of wage, which is what keeps these types of industries alive. However, without a group that are willing to take lower wages and put up with the BS of customers, these places are going to feel the pinch hard.

I think California in particular really fucked up badly when they tried to push minimum wage to compete with inflation. The problem is that taxes went up alongside these wage increases so you can’t tell me there wasn’t a hidden side agenda. The real solution ought to have been keeping the cost of living low by enforcing maximum rent hikes, affordable housing and preventing companies trying to lure employees with insane salaries. I really believe a lot of the crap you’re seeing in California is because of what California did to itself.  But that leads me to the next parts.

Newsom Trying to Close Billionaire One Time Tax Law

I’ve seen some arguments saying how this bill is being done by a special interest group and that the idea of a one time tax against people of a certain income level is ridiculous, even though the title in spirit seems to be what liberals generally want. What I dislike is Newsom’s response on it in saying how it’ll shut down innovation because of how California already has driven away various billionaires like Larry Page. Well, it’s not like Newsom tried to prevent more of this crap from getting to this level under his watch in the first place.

While I’m sure there’s going to be a bunch of red tape that happens before a law like this can pass, I kinda want to see it happen just because things are so fucked up right now, I want to see just how far this situation will go and what the consequences will be. I would prefer there to be a better solution like a mass force function to lower the cost of living by 40% in general and cuts to state taxes like sales tax that has gone up. People will say, “Well, we need roads for all those pot holes that them big rigs are causing.” etc. But when those pot holes get patched, the construction crew create a bigger mess with blocking lanes down. So is the solution just this weak, high level pie in the sky dreams? Shouldn’t California be looking at better long term solutions that actually make living here worth it besides the massively overrated beaches and weather (that gets horribly hot if you’re in SoCal right now)? All I can say is that given Newsom’s tenure, he hasn’t really improve this state much. Which again leads me to the next issue.

Newsom (and His Family) Being Investigated

Now, anyone who knows me will realize that I’m no fan of our current model president. But the same people will realize that I’ve never been a vocal supporter for Newsom. Newsom has always struck me as a career politician. I’m sure if there was some centrist party that catered to big business and economically liberal types, he would be involved in that rather than the democratic party. But he’s on the democratic side of the equation because he’s been able to get his seat here and certainly will make an attempt at presidency I have no doubt (despite him saying he wouldn’t; but I think it’s a matter of time).

A lot of the gestures I’ve seen this guy do seem more as political theater to me and trying to gain the good will of certain special interest groups. But I haven’t really seen things being done for just someone who’s been a long time resident here and deserves something for putting up with all the rest of the bullshit of this stupid state. Now, he’s using the California government site to basically bitch about this investigation. My main comment here is whether there is something or not, I think he kinda brought this onto himself even before all this nonsense with our current head of the US in charge. I don’t think much is going to come out of this except inconveniencing him but I’m already mentally done with politicians. If there’s one thing I have to say about the democratic party, it’s that they really fucked up for a while. A lot of the crap you’re seeing is really from a history of people who should’ve long stepped aside but didn’t or pushing up the wrong person, etc. Even if we have a nut in charge, the dems shot themselves in the foot a while back, maybe as far as Billy boy Clinton with the whole political correctness nonsense in the 90s. So I find it hard to sympathize with this party at this point in my life.

And for the record, no I’m not a Republican. I’m more anti-government and anti-establishment. I don’t believe in groups, I hate groupthink, I think politicians suck as a people and type and I find the whole thing frustrating to watch no matter which side is in charge. Evil is evil, one wrong and a right doesn’t make something right, etc. Lastly, I disagree with Plato’s “Lesser of two evils”. How about no evil and just rejecting everything if the choices plain suck? That’s what I did with most TV and I’m happier for it.

In the Wrestling News

Jim Cornette/Brian Last Review A Letter from a Former Six Flags Employee on Mark Shapiro

There’s a great video that Jim Cornette/Brian Last posted on their YouTube channel regarding an employee who had to deal with TKO’s current president Mark Shapiro. Basically, the person blast Mark Shapiro as this know-nothing typical management fuckwit who turned Six Flags into a joke. Later on, someone mentioned that this was the same person that Papa John’s owner said how he (Shapiro) knew nothing about the pizza business (probably in reference to the partnership with Six Flags). But my quote for Shapiro is that I’ve never known a Shapiro that didn’t have some shady controversy surrounding the name.

I think what there needs to be is instituted a law where any corporate executive must take some sort of ethics and code of conduct test where they have some sense of social responsibility rather than pure greed (i.e. being an addict of some form of sin). Then if they fail or are shown to fail during their tenure, they ought to be stripped from the position, relinquish all wealth to a public trust fund and their family and any relatives connected to them must be heavily audited for a generation until proven otherwise. Maybe that ought to improve how corporations behave with these cretins running around.

Dark Side of the Ring for Season 7 Returning

In something wrestling related that I am looking forward to, Dark Side of the Ring Season 7 will air on July 7th on Vice. The big topics for Dark Side of the Ring Season 7 will involve:

• Jeff Jarrett and TNA
• Paul Orndorff
• Ray Traylor (i.e. Big Boss Man/Big Bubba Rogers)
• Missy Hyatt
• Necro Butcher vs Samoa Joe
• Zach Gowen
• WCW’s Renegade (aka Rick Wilson or as we used to call him “Rent-a-gade)

Jim Cornette did release a video on his YouTube where he discusses the various topics with Evan Husney as he partook in a few episodes here. For myself, I’m looking forward to the most with Missy Hyatt as she’s still alive. As a long time fan of Missy Hyatt, it’s interesting that her story was turned into a Dark Side type of tragedy. I know she’s had her share of controversies over the years and fans get on her case for certain incidents. But when I think of how she earned her nickname as the real “first lady of professional wrestling,” it really is true.

Most people consider the first valet as Miss Elizabeth because of her association/marriage to Randy Savage. But over in WCCW in Texas, they were far ahead of the game where Sunshine and Missy were having main event cat fights. Missy certainly is the blueprint of the bitchy/girlfriend/snob type of valet that could get heat. And if you can get around her nasally southern voice, she does come across fairly knowledgeable about the business. Plus, she’s brutally honest not just about the business, fans but about herself, which is pretty rare. So that episode, much like the Sensational Sherri one, is going to be something I really want to see.

Foodz Stuff

McDonald’s Fried Apple Pie Coming Back

Even if I’m trying to swear off most fast food, I’m going to have to get a few of these when it returns on June 23rd. Now, I didn’t realize that the baked version had been sold since ’92 but I do believe it’s nowhere near as good as the original fried version. Apparently, these won’t last long so there’s probably going to be a rush while it’s available. I’m thinking this might be a marketing ploy at McDonald’s testing the waters for a nostalgia play and that if successful, these fried apple pies will surface periodically just like the winter McRib sandwich. The thing that angers me though is that I honestly preferred the cherry pie version much better back in the day. I do hope that they’ll last for a few months at the very least because I don’t want to deal with a competitive drive thru just for a stupid pie that probably won’t be the same.

Cheap but Good Dinner Idea

Finally, on the home “cooking” front, I ended up buying one of those in store rotisserie chickens at Albertsons the other day just because I was too hungry to clearly think and didn’t want to deal with some chicken thighs I already had (and ended up freezing). Along with the chicken, I picked up some chicken gravy and rice pilaf (RiceARoni). The RiceARoni was something that was cheaper than another brand I normally buy. Unfortunately, the instructions wanted you to cook it in some pan. Last time I did that for rice, it set off my fire alarm. However, I’ve made rice pilaf using a small pot with a cover before with some olive oil. So I used a similar method to cook this and it came out better. The first night though the chicken was pretty dry and not flavorful, so adding the chicken gravy was the move. I had extra gravy and used one of those plastic containers for lunch meat to store the leftovers. So tonight will be my third night with this meal. Maybe altogether it’s $4-5 per meal, which isn’t bad when you think about the general cost of food going out.