The real story isn't the gun scare or the patent fight—it's that Creality's pricing just made $8/kg filament normal. Those bulk PETG and PLA deals ($7.42/kg, $8.63/kg landed) have quietly reset the floor for what users should expect to pay, and anyone selling commodity filament above $10/kg is now competing on brand loyalty alone, not value. The Continuous Composites lawsuit is theater—patent disputes in 3D printing rarely matter unless you're a tier-one toolmaker—but Creality's relentless margin compression does. Meanwhile, Prusa's firmware treadmill (five releases in what looks like a month?) suggests they're chasing bugs rather than shipping confidence, which actually *does* matter if you care about uptime over hype.