PC gaming has a problem: high prices for a key component, due to an unforeseen surge of interest. We're in the thick of it, with no light at the end of the tunnel just yet, as supply will take a very long time to catch up to the outsized demand.
Wait, haven't we been here before?!
Sure we have, lots of times. We're likely to get here again, too, as politicians around the globe have turned the semiconductor biz hewn of globalisation into something to be controlled and influenced by newly-minted factions with names you'd expect to see in a new Command & Conquer game: Pax Silica and WAICO.
Hey, when are they making another of those games? Anyways, global silicon gangs. They're a thing now.
So, why is PC gaming so susceptible to the whims of global politics and trade? You don't have to go far back through the annals of PC Gamer to find the last time we spoke of some huge problem in PC gaming that sounds awfully similar to the memory crisis we're in today. Most recently, the closure and subsequent disruption of the Strait of Hormuz.
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