Did you ever wonder why so many games have a seemingly unnecessary multiplayer/online component these days? If the server side code is an integral part of the game then it can be used as a form of DRM.
In the Culture novels robots assigned to this task have super accelerated consciousness, beyond human cognitive capabilities and can basically harmlessly stop you with a force field if you do anything to attempt to harm another person. Can Elmo's bots do any of that? Not even close.
It's worth noting that at least for now, the original version of System Shock 2 is still for sale on GOG. There's no indication on the page that it's also set to be taken down imminently and it's part of GOG's preservation program.
Expect specialist "open" hardware capable of installing any software/OS to become increasingly expensive, while increasingly locked-down, mass-produced consumer hardware remains at current price. You only need to look at TVs for an example of this - try finding a recent non-smart TV at a reasonable price as the cheap models are all subsidised by the revenue from pushing ads into your face.
I saw some early demos and hoped that AI could bring about a revolution in on-the-fly procedural generated content for gaming to do things that would be literally impossible by other methods. But no, instead it has been used to replace artists to produce poor-quality pre-generated static content and I couldn't be more disappointed.
Probably an instance of Spotify "Ghost Artists". Spotify pays unknown musicians small amounts to record generic-sounding tracks and sign over all royalties to Spotify.
Did you ever wonder why so many games have a seemingly unnecessary multiplayer/online component these days? If the server side code is an integral part of the game then it can be used as a form of DRM.