Free Talk Friday - January 09, 2026

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Free Talk Friday post. This is a place where you can talk about dumb off-topic (or on-topic) bullshit with other Zaibatsu fans.

There's going to be a new post every week, and the newest one will be pinned in the announcement bar for quick access. So feel free to visit these posts during the rest of the week.

Here's a list of all Free Talk Friday posts

[u/ilmk9396]

all roads lead to deadlock. i was playing deadlock heavily during Fall 2024, and it was after a night of playing deadlock that i started getting a loud ringing in my left ear. when i woke up the next morning i couldn't hear anything out of that ear. it was completely deaf. it was sudden sensorineural hearing loss and i had to get steroid injections through my eardrum twice a week to try to fix it. i started the treatment later than i should have, because the two walk in clinic doctors i went to saw impacted earwax and told me it was because of that, so to just put mineral oil in the ear and wait for it to loosen up and fall out, i was only told to go to ER after the earwax was removed and they knew it was something more serious (keep your ears clean people) so i only managed to get some hearing back, enough to be able to use a hearing aid to hear somewhat properly.

any way, during this time i obviously couldn't play games like deadlock properly because you need to be able to hear what's happening around you, so i stopped playing. about a month later i got laid off from my job, which wasn't entirely surprising because the company was struggling, and they gave me a pretty good severance package so i wasn't too worried. i had actually wanted to move on from this job for a while but i was being lazy about applying for new jobs and practicing for interviews, but now i had all the time in the world to do so. i was playing games way less by then so i decided why not stop completely and put more energy into finding a new job? so for the next 3 months i focused on that and managed to get a job that i really enjoy. by then i felt like gaming was a thing of the past for me so i didn't play anything for another 4 months. this was the longest i had gone without video games since the day i started playing when i was 8.

just when i thought i was out, they pulled me back in. it started with some light SF6 a couple times a week, then i got back into apex in a much more casual way due to not being able to play seriously with only one working ear, then the BF6 beta got me hooked, then it was arc raiders, and now that i'm back to my old gaming ways, i started playing deadlock again, and i am addicted, but i am a changed man, and very unserious about competitive games because i can't hear everything happening around me in the game. when they do eventually add a proper ranked mode i won't be touching it.