Chris Till – Degrowth Communist Blog

UK Defence Strategy written by a Degrowth Communist

All tanks are as useless as this destroyed one in modern warfare

As with my previous articles in this series; this one will seem very shocking if you’re used to consuming British mainstream news coverage. All you tend to see in the establishment discourse are calls for yet more military spending (where the follow up question is never “how will you pay for it?”) Along with that, you just get warmongering about Russia, and fearmongering about China and Iran.

Military spending and outdated weapons

If I was writing our military strategy right now, the first thing I’d do would be to immediately slash the military budget by more than half. The latest target the Labour government have set is for 3% of GDP. Initially due by the end of the next parliament, but it seems that they now want to pull this forward by a handful of years. The current amount is something between 2.3% and 2.5%. I would cut that to around 1% of GDP to start with, and switch focus to be on defensive weapons rather than offensive. There’s no reason to have jet fighters, aircraft carriers or tanks in the present day, when we have such advanced automated weapons such as drones and ballistic missiles. It would presumably be extremely easy to destroy an aircraft carrier or a tank these days, so to me they come across as toys, for lack of a better term. I think it’s very clear that in 2026, the types of weapons bought by militaries is led by nostalgia as much as it is by the bloodlust of warmongering (overwhelmingly male) leaders.

There’s very limited reason to have ground troops either, outside of perhaps special operatives like the SAS. Yes, it’s fun to run around shooting people in online FPS video games. But in real life, you’d logically just send in a drone, fire a guided missile, or use a sort of defensive missile system that automatically intercepts incoming fire. We can redeploy the vast majority of ground troops to do infinitely more useful jobs that aren’t going to leave them suffering with PTSD. Very much the opposite. Building renewable energy, EV buses and associated charging infrastructure. Maybe simply building homes. The types of people who end up as ground troops in the military are likely to be very capable of being trained as builders, mechanics or engineers for example. There are a lot of things they could be doing that would clearly benefit the country over what they’re doing now.

I would extend this to all troops including those stationed in overseas military bases. I would close all of the overseas bases entirely. Our military should have no presence outside of the UK. Same with the US and every other nation. Unless you wanted to go down the route of having a continental army or global alliance, which I’m not opposed to. Perhaps that would be a good way to reduce costs in the next few years even further than what I’m envisioning. It could be a decent compromise between fully getting rid of the militaries, and continuing as we are now, for people who don’t feel comfortable (yet) with my kind of strategy. But I think doing it in a continental organisation would be difficult if you have strongly differing politics within the allied countries. It would make more sense to organise it based on ideology.

Nuclear Weapons must go

I would retire nuclear weapons. Our current nuclear submarines don’t work, and we require the USA’s permission to fire their nuclear warheads. Not that we should keep nuclear weapons even if they did work and we fully controlled them. But the current situation is particularly absurd.

People will say that getting rid of our nuclear deterrent leaves us exposed. At the end of the day, any kind of nuclear war means the end of humanity as we know it anyway. And we wouldn’t be any more exposed than we are currently, even if the world wasn’t going to end in the process. In fact, we are about as exposed as it’s possible to be. To reiterate; we rely on a fascist dictatorship currently threatening to invade (or has already invaded) various countries, to use our broken nuclear weapons. We’re also not a part of the EU, so we’re not going to be a high priority for them to defend if it came to that. Anyone who is actually serious about national security should be talking about rejoining. And NATO is under threat due to Trump’s threats over Greenland too. I agree with Zack Polanski about NATO. In the current paradigm, I would look to replace it with a European or World alliance with countries who aren’t fascist. I think that’s only likely to be sufficient for a few years; so I wouldn’t seek to go in that direction personally. I’d want a global alliance specifically for true world peace and disarmament. But it would be preferable to the current situation at least.

Emissions of war

Militaries are never going to be sustainable. Just the idea of war powered by green energy is laughable. Destroying things in a sustainable way can never happen. This is a big reason why military emissions have never been included in national emission reduction targets, or talked about at the useless UN COPs. It is estimated that 5.5% of overall global emissions are attributable to militaries. But this crucially doesn’t include the emissions of warfare itself, or the emissions involved in clearing up the destruction and rebuilding. Nor does it include the long-term health implications of the lingering toxic chemicals remaining in the environment. Human and animal lives are just collateral damage.

I think it’s safe to assume based on the data I was able to find that we’re probably looking at closer to 10% or more of global emissions. That’s a lot. And we can cut it.

The warmongering neoliberal leaders we’ve been stuck with for decades knew that militaries will always be inherently polluting, and they didn’t care to do anything about it. We need a world where we focus only on looking after people and things, and stop putting so much energy into poisoning and destroying them.

Pacifism is necessary

In the end, a world in which militaries exist at all is a scenario where genuine climate action is practically impossible. When governments are spending significant percentages of GDP on deadly weapons, and they’re boasting about how that’s good for growth; while healthcare, education, housing and transport are all severely underfunded and struggling; where utilities are privatised, failing, and unaffordable; you know you’re dealing with a society with its priorities backwards. And I didn’t even mention climate action there. The sentence was already far too long. And it more importantly reflects the reality that the preservation of our world is practically always the last thing people think about.

Pacifism is necessary in my view. Can you imagine a world in which we actually take the climate crisis seriously, and all countries genuinely work together, while we still have militaries? I can’t.

Maybe you do think we can have militaries and deal with the climate in a serious way. Maybe you think that the issue is the size of the militaries. With smaller militaries, and a more friendly overall global perspective and desire for co-operation, we’ll be able to do it. Perhaps you’re right. I just think history suggests we would have done so by now if that was going to be the case.

Feminism’s role

There’s clearly a gendered element to this. We still live in a man’s world; and you don’t get equal and happy societies, world peace, or climate action without gender equality first. It’s the root of everything going wrong. Obviously, there are exceptions; but I would say in general that women are most often involved in nurturing and building things, and men are almost always the ones involved in destroying them.

I think this tendency is visible in politics too, where in recent UK polling, we see the far-right Reform UK polling higher among men, and the left wing / centre-left Green Party polling higher among women. I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this. Degrowth communism and feminism are inseparable. We need a more compassionate, intelligent society in which we prioritise all the things neoliberalism has left to rot, while dismantling the one thing they care about building up; the armed forces.

Things are already bad enough under the supposedly centrist Labour government; and the fascism of a potential Reform replacement will dramatically exascerbate the existing damage to our precious public services. More people on the left need to be willing to stand up and say the kinds of things I’ve outlined in this article; no matter how insane it makes us look in our extremely disingenuous, reactionary media. It doesn’t matter if they laugh, as long as the idea of pacifism is planted in their minds.

I don’t necessarily think the Greens have to go as far as I’m going. I think you need a more extreme flank and a more mainstream friendly party like the Greens are right now. Roger Hallam is definitely right about that. But I do think Zack and co need to seriously challenge the bloated military budget as a starting point.

There is a real threat of fascism materialising; with their toxic politics being amplified daily by a media that is clearly biased towards misinformation, hate, pollution, destruction and division. We can’t let the bullshit warmongering narrative go unchallenged, and we have to offer a totally different perspective. Let as many people as possible know that things don’t have to be this way. The military doesn’t have to keep growing. It can shrink and change. Or it can disappear entirely if we want.

Similarly to how Labour are more scared of the Greens than Reform; they’re also more scared of peace than they are of war. Think about that.

February 18, 2026
UK Housing Strategy written by a Degrowth Communist

Housing fit for the future

In my previous story about energy, I briefly touched on housing, because obviously it overlaps with energy in terms of solar roofs; and in terms of efficiency standards for heating and cooling etc. But now I’m going to go more in-depth on the type of housing policy I’d be pursuing. Obviously, this is extremely to the left of the UK establishment, and I’d probably get locked up at this point in authoritarian Britain if they find my blog. I think I’m joking about that anyway…

Ban landlords (and second homes)

The first and most urgent step the country desperately needs in my opinion is to ban private landlords. The rent is insanely high in the country and bears almost no relation to the wages working class people are earning. We need to get rid of private renting as a category. It’s not acceptable for rich people to be able to buy more than one home, and get their tenants to effectively pay the landord’s mortgage for them. It’s a disgusting practice and needs to end. The only renting that should be going on in the country (and world) is social renting.

We must force all landlords to sell their properties to councils. My instinct would be to force them to do it for below market rate (for the first rental property where they’re not the owner-occupier). But perhaps we could have a sort of “housing amnesty”; during which time, landlords could come forward, and get a better deal or some other benefit. This would be for the first property though (and apply to all second / holiday homes as well). For any additional properties, councils would just seize them. I don’t think landlords deserve to get paid back for all the properties, considering all the rent that they’ve effectively stolen from their tenants over the years. The value of one property would be more than generous in my view.

Nationalise the house builders

Every time I see a story in the local news about a new proposed development; or even “sustainable” communities from centrist outlets like Everything Electric (formerly Fully Charged), I’m almost never impressed. Most of the time, I’m dismayed at the idiotic designs of the average new build estate. The homes are all unsustainable, old fashioned and car-dependent. Worst of all, they’re totally unaffordable for the vast majority of people.

Some supposedly sustainable developments I’ve seen are still car-dependent; consisting of detached and semi-detached housing, with garages and built-in EV charging. Yes, that sounds good to most people on paper these days. But it’s really not and here’s why. It’s firstly not affordable, and creating new car-dependence at this point is insane. We need to be moving away from car ownership, EV or otherwise. The vast majority of these developments or new towns don’t have well thought through public transport plans. They’re often not built around a train station. The bus routes don’t exist or the service is poor. There’s usually no cycling infrastructure provision, and if there is, it’s patheticlly poor. You need centralised government planning to make sure this stuff is done well. And you need experts on sustainability, local ecosystems, public transport and active travel involved at every stage of the process. Ideally leading the process rather than just consulting. As far as I can tell, these things are practically never properly considered. The only development I can think of that did a decent job is Eddington, near Cambridge. And that is led I believe by Cambridge University, so you’d expect some smart planning there.

These bad decisions are hard to fix once the houses have been built. It locks in incoherent design in the country for decades to come, which will make things so much harder for future governments than they need to be. Especially when they’ll be desperately trying to reduce emissions and car dependence by then.

We also need to move away from large, detached houses. And not just because they’re expensive. They’re also very space inefficient obviously. We need to be building density. I’m lucky enough to have grown up in a detached home. Since 3 or 4 years old anyway. I can’t remember before that when apparently we lived in a semi-detached. If everyone in the country lived in a detached house, we’d run out of room. It’s an inherently unfair form of housing if you want an equal society. There are benefits of detached houses though. There’s no doubt about that. Certainly the biggest for me is having a garden. You have the ability to make your own space a haven for nature, which I really appreciate. The other benefit I feel in my own life is the ability to play music out loud without annoying your neighbours. The biggest benefit for most people would probably be having freehold over the land. Avoiding leasehold ownership of flats is definitely a huge plus. But I think these are all things that can apply in apartment buildings if we choose to make that change.

As I wrote in my last article, we can build apartment buildings and terrace housing in harmony with nature. Without fences, with wild areas and generally an open feel that’s good for people and wildlife. Yes, we hear on Springwatch how “wildlife corridors” (aka making a hole in your fence) can help massively, and that’s true as long as you have nice neighbours who want to join you. But we can do so much better.

We can also design high quality apartment buildings that have good sound insulation, allowing people to not disrupt their neighbours (or as much as possible). With regard to leasehold properties; it’s slightly more difficult. When you have council housing as a major part of the housing stock, you clearly don’t have that problem. But in terms of ownership, we can mandate collective freehold among the owners of the flats in a building. It’s never going to be the same as true freehold for apartment dwellers; but as long as we make sure the occupiers own the building and not a company or the original developers, then that’s a decent compromise.

Even though I’ve personally never lived in a flat, I’ve always been fascinated by them. I used to enjoy going to visit my Grandparents who lived in a block of flats in the town centre when they downsized from the former family home. I thought it was so cool. The layout, the communal areas (even though there wasn’t much to speak of at that place), the intercom and remote front door unlocking. Even the underground car-park interested me. I guess you’re always going to be curious about a different way of living than what you’ve been used to your whole life. But it’s more than that. I’ve always been interested in small spaces. When I was young, I made a little clubhouse in a cupboard in one of the bedrooms. Aside from my own interests, I do believe that it’s the best and most sustainable way for all of us to live; and we can do some really innovative things to improve our quality of life that we haven’t really considered up until now. Well, except the rich. Funnily enough, the rich individualistic capitalists have the best communal facilities out there in their fancy apartment buildings or at luxury hotels they frequent around thr world. It’s time for everyone else to experience a bit of luxurious convenience in our lives too.

Going back to cost; the reason why these developments overwhelmingly consist of detached and semi-detached houses is because these privately owned developers make more profit from that type of housing. Even the apartment buildings that are built are almost exclusively luxury ones. It’s no great secret.

The only way to get affordable housing built is to nationalise the developers and bring in strict, expert led, ecologically considerate building regulations. That way, we can ensure that we’re building future-proof housing and infrastructure. Far from what we’re building right now, which is not fit for this century, and barely fit for the last one.

Build a lot of council housing

We have a housing crisis. We need to build a lot of housing. But we have to be intelligent about how we do it and where. I don’t think we should necessarily close the door on home ownership. At least not straight away. That’s for the long term degrowth communist plan. But for the moment, I’d like to see full focus on small, affordable, but still quality made council homes; with a small percentage of homes to buy. We have a lot of brownfield sites in this country we can be building on. According to the government, there are enough brownfield sites to build 1.5 million homes, and that half of these sites could be built on immediately. And not only that, I think it would be reasonable to assume that this figure of 1.5 million homes probably includes a lot of detached and semi-detached housing. So logically, you could build a lot more than that if you focused entirely on flats and terrace houses. And that’s building mid-rise buildings. No massive Hong-Kong style residential towers required. We should start there, and only go further out into the countryside when we’ve exhausted all other avenues.

I say start with brownfield sites, but actually, we have a lot of empty homes in this country too (around 700,000!). And when you combine those with all of the former private lets that we’d be taking into council control, we’d be able to make a big dent into our housing problems very quickly. According to the Office for National Statistics, 19% of all UK households in 2024 were in the private rented sector. It has overtaken social renting at 17%, with owner occupiers at 65%. We should be aiming to eliminate private rentals within a few years, and increase the social rented sector to something like 50% in the same kind of timeframe.

I think it’s definitely possible if we try. That’s fundamentally what’s holding us back. The only thing the neoliberal governments of recent times have been trying to do is increase house prices to encourage selfish homeowners to vote for them at the next election.

February 12, 2026
UK Energy Strategy written by a Degrowth Communist

I’m getting increasingly fed up of hearing so much bullshit in the media, and even from many on the left. So I’m going to lay out my personal energy strategy for this country (presumably can be applied to your country as well). So here’s what I’d do if I were Ed Miliband or equivalent useless dwebe from where you live.

My kind of solar housing

I’m having a hard time figuring out which would be the most important thing to start with. I think probably heavily subsidising the cost of solar installs for all properties and commercial, municipal buildings. And for those who live in apartments, I’d give them an equivalent subsidy off their energy bill. The energy bill subsidy would only need to be in operation for a year or so. Just until the other policies listed below had come into full effect.

Next, I’d ban new nuclear energy (including the establishment’s new favourite bullshit talking point, SMRs (Small, Modular Reactors). This would be a priority because these things could cause huge headaches for a long time to come if they actually get built. So we need to make sure they don’t.

I would also ban any kind of new coal (did they build that coal mine?) oil or gas development. We sometimes see oil powered grid backup sites, which are insanely polluting; and could obviously be replaced by grid battery storage. And we could do this very quickly. The only types of energy that I’d allow to be built would be Solar (domestic, municipal, commercial roofs, solar parks, farms etc); Wind (onshore and offshore as required, and as recommended by experts); and some other more niche renewables. For example: Geothermal, Tidal, Pumped Hydro and so on, where they would be more suitable than wind or solar. I don’t think they’d be used much, but there’s no reason to fully rule them out of the energy mix.

The next policy would be to nationalise the National Grid (private company with misleading name), and the energy providers. Or I’d shut down all the energy providers except Ecotricity, and designate them as the UK’s sole nationalised energy provider.

I would of course change the absurd policy that exists right now, which ties the cost of electricity to the cost of gas, so that we get actually affordable renewable energy. This is something Dale Vince constantly talks about, but is completely ignored by the media and our shitty establishment politicians. Including of course his beloved Labour Party. I’m sure they’ll get it together in another year or two Dale. Keep the faith…

I would regulate that all new buildings be built to the highest environmental standards for insulation, energy generation and so on.

I would ban new detached and semi-detached housing. Everything would be small apartment buildings and terrace housing. Everything much smaller and more energy efficient; built for people and nature to coexist in harmony. I don’t want to get any further into housing or other areas of policy though. I want to stick with specifically energy as much as possible.

I would plan to have a mixture of domestic, municipal and large grid battery storage sites. Most homes won’t require it, but other types of buildings would benefit from battery backup.

There would be a plan for the gradual phasing out of existing oil, gas and nuclear energy infrastructure. Gas would be last to go, because of the potential extended use of domestic gas boilers for heating. It’ll depend on the rollout of green gas, how hot it gets in summers, as to whether AC becomes a necessity; and if Heat Pumps start to make sense for mass adoption; which could happen with these policy changes. But this is an area where there are different potential paths to explore at a later date. There’s no real rush to settle on one technology. Especially when there’s so much else to do in the meantime.

Wasn’t that nice? Considering what it’d be like living in a country with sane leadership that wants to solve problems.

February 1, 2026
The situation with PC (Mac / Linux) Gaming

Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com

In the past, I used to play PC games quite a lot. I played MMOs like World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic a lot for example. I played StarCraft and other RTS games quite often too. But for the last 5-10 years, I’ve been almost exclusively a console gamer. As in pretty much TV and controller only. I tend to leave my Switch, and now Switch 2 permanently docked. I don’t really like the feeling of the post DS / 3DS / PS Vita mainstream handheld offerings from Nintendo, Valve, and a handful of others, including Microsoft through their partnership with ASUS. They’re all big, heavy and bulky. The point is, I mostly gave up on PC and Mac gaming for a variety of reasons. I was frustrated by cost, reliability, complexity (of hardware, of multiple storefronts); and above all, feeling held to ransom by Microsoft and their Windows OS if I want to play games.

I want to get into the situation with computer gaming now, where I think it’s going, and where it needs to go to become worthy of the gamers who spend our money and time on this hobby. I’m not going to get into the free to play model which I absolutely hate. That can come in another blog, although it’s almost not worth touching on because there’s not much to say other than we all hate it (or are lying to ourselves) and it should burn in hell. I want to focus on hardware, operating systems and storefronts.

So with that said, let’s talk about operating systems.

Windows 11 isn’t the worst in terms of design, I will admit. I like the central start menu. I like the way the windows look and the minimise, restore and maximise buttons. I find them easier to use than the small buttons on Mac. I even like the default blue ribbon wallpaper design. But that’s where the love-in ends. Beyond that, it’s bad. You can get rid of a lot of the nonsense ads and clickbait news, simplify the start menu, and remove co-pilot and the search box. But you can’t get rid of the sluggish performance or Microsoft’s poor policies on data collection. People deserve a good alternative to Windows that’s snappy, lightweight, and respects your privacy. When our 16 year old Dell XPS wasn’t eligible for the Windows 11 upgrade, and security update support was about to be ended, I thought I might as well try installing Ubuntu again. It had been a long time since the last time I tried it (funnily enough, about 16 years; just before we got said Dell), and I was impressed. Everything seemed to work out of the box. The wi-fi, video in web browsers. All the web apps we’ve become so used to, that previously we might need a plugin for, or go throughsome other hassle in order to get them to work in the past.

I installed Steam because of course I was curious if our old PopCap games would run on Linux, and most of them did. The problem came a month or so later when something seemed to have gone pretty badly wrong. There were repeated icons for those games listed in our user accounts under the software list that seemed to multiply by the day. Then Ubuntu started having real problems booting, until eventually the whole OS seemed to be corrupted and I couldn’t do anything.

At that point we had a think about what to do next. I had a look on the Steam store, and it seemed to indicate that those old games were playable on Mac, so I started thinking about whether a basic spec Mac Mini would do for the next few years or more. We decided to get the Mac, and upon setting it up and installing Steam, promptly realised that the Apple logo next to the game names were referring to old Intel-based Macs, and that Apple Silicon is not supported if you want to play old 32-bit games. To be fair, that was my own fault. But if someone like me, who’s usually very detail oriented can make that mistake, it’s easy to imagine many others have as well.

Then, I thought there was no harm in having a punt and installing Windows 11 via a trial of Parallels (Mac virtualisation software). To our great surprise, those old 32-bit games ran fine in the virtual machine. I really wasn’t expecting that, given that they’re designed for 32-bit Intel / AMD processors; and definitely not Apple M-series chips. The problem then obviously is that you’ve bought a Mac for £600, and then you have to spend about £60 annually on a Parallels licence, and £200 on a Windows 11 Pro licence, just to play a handful of 15 year old games. For not much more than that, you could buy a Windows 11 native mini-PC from Geekom or similar. And if you bought a PC for the cost of all of those items together (£860-ish), you almost certainly could run many modern games at decent settings at 1080p.

At this point, I was starting to think about getting back into PC gaming properly myself, but we were stuck with a base model Mac Mini with very limited storage and RAM for modern gaming, and running MacOS; which itself still has limited support from most game developers. The only real option available to me was to play the relative handful of Mac games that I can fit on the 256gb of storage, and will run well. And beyond that you’re limited to streaming (GeForce Now, Luna or Xbox Cloud). So then you’re forced to pay money to some of the least moral, or most environmentally damaging companies out there, or watch ads in the case of Nvidia’s service. GeForce Now is the one I prefer of course, because it integrates with Steam. This means you own the games for the future and can play them on your own hardware as well. This is a decent stopgap solution, but I don’t think we should be reliant on big corporate data centres in future, especially as prices keep climbing because of AI and neoliberalism. I want to be able to play on my own hardware ideally.

But then what would happen if I wanted to try Linux for gaming now? Well, to be truthful, I don’t know. That’s the problem with traditional Linux. Very little is truly user friendly when it comes to games. It always seems to be guesswork as far as compatibility with traditional Linux distros like Ubuntu and Fedora, and especially when it comes to the more “boutique” distros designed for gaming, like Bazzite. I had a look on their website and to me it comes across as an OS for tinkerers and not the general public. Basically, the situation for regular people who want to own their games and play them on their own computer hardware (that’s not Windows), and have a wide selection, is not good. That is if you don’t factor in Valve’s activities.

Thank god Valve (Steam) exists. If it weren’t for them, gaming in general (and especially those of us who play and spend our money) would be so much worse off. Their Steam Deck; while it’s not something I’d like to use as I mentioned before, I can appreciate that it has put developers, publishers and console hardware makers under pressure to have more consumer friendly practices; and forced many of them to support Linux hardware in order to access that Steam Deck installed base. And obviously it’s provided many players with a great handheld gaming experience.

Their upcoming Steam Machine (console / PC hybrid / GameCube tribute) is another huge deal that piles yet more pressure on the rest of the industry. A lot of people will hopefully be buying this thing, and they’re going to be expecting extensive support for new games. And the fact that the device is relatively modest hardware spec wise (or it certainly will be in a couple of years time), that also bodes well for many gamers without the cash to keep upgrading; but who still want a PC experience with keyboard and mouse support, and an actual desktop OS as an option. As well as the rest of us who want to use our similarly modest hardware for as long as possible. It will increase the pressure on developers to keep the system requirements low as long as they can.

So, if I was going to get seriously into PC gaming again now, what would I do? Honestly I wouldn’t buy or build a high end gaming PC and eschew Windows 11 for any Linux distro. I just don’t think that’s an option for 99% of people yet. Hopefully that changes soon. I also wouldn’t want to compromise my principles and buy a Windows 11 PC. I would either get a Steam Machine, or just continue as I am with cloud gaming and a handful of local games on the Mac Mini. That’s as good as you can do unless you’re a Linux expert and you want the hassle (or fun depending on your perspective) of solving the various inevitable problems that crop up.

I think in the long run, we need to be demanding a socialist gaming scenario. One storefront that’s nationalised and globally available (Steam), no DRM and true game ownership, maintaining free online play and features like cloud saves that are practically essential in today’s gaming world. We need to ensure games are maintained in the long run and preserved for future generations of players; with hardware built to last and be supported for as long as possible. We also need to see cloud gaming be democratised. Built for the people, affordable and easy to use.

We need to see less AI in gaming. That’s one of my big fears for the next generation of consoles;that they’ll try pushing AI where it’s not wanted and not needed, to try justifying a big increase in cost of both hardware and games. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen too, and fight back hard if they do try it. Gamers need to learn to vote with their wallets finally. People need the self control to be able to resist that latest blockbuster game and hold the developers and publishers accountable when their social policies don’t reach a level we can accept.

I suppose what I’m saying is, the best thing you can do right now as a gamer in this capitalist hellhole of a global society to bring about positive change, is to buy a Steam Machine if you want to support a better future. It sounds like a funny thing to say as an Ecosocialist, but it’s indicative of how right wing gaming has become. You have no choice but to participate in it. But at least this way you send the right kind of message. You can support a (is it social democratic?) company that has many policies that clearly outshine the competition in terms of consumer friendliness. Obviously, don’t buy one if you don’t need it right now. If you’re happy with your current hardware, or you’re happy as a console only gamer. But definitely consider Valve hardware when you do come to replace your gear.

And maybe by then, it’ll be much more reasonable for the vast majority of regular gamers who currently feel bullied into using Windows to switch over to either Mac or Linux. Linux probably the ideal, since it’s open-source, and there’s Steam OS. Maybe we’ll see a situation where gaming hardware manufacturers like ASUS ROG ship with Steam OS over Windows. It could happen. But even Apple do seem to be making progress now too after many years of stagnation, when seemingly only Blizzard were loyally supporting it. Razer have recently begun supporting Mac with their peripherals and accompanying software, and it can only keep going in this fashion. If Microsoft keep having trouble converting Windows 10 users to 11 (presumably 12 soon); and they keep stepping on rakes with regards to their Xbox policies that gamers hate, then this change could accelerate much faster than I’m expecting.

But certainly for right now, maybe just get a Switch 2 and a Steam Machine… Then you’ll have a great selection of games you’d get on PS5 and Xbox. But you’d also get a nice mixture of the affordable Steam sales, as well as the high quality Nintendo games, that probably won’t be affordable, but they will be good. That’s probably the ultimate socialist gaming setup for the time being. Obviously, the long term goal should be for all games, new and old to be available on all platforms; in a similar way to movies and music. And we need to see legislation to make it far easier and legal to run games past a certain age on any hardware you see fit. Right now it’s a sort of unspeakable dark art to run roms of classic games on new handhelds or other devices. We need to make that process seamless and normalised.
Fediverse Reactions
January 27, 2026

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