kwarg

I don’t know if its the age or perhaps I unconciously became sick of the practices OP describes, but the games I genuinelly enjoy playing the most nowadays are mainly AA or Indie. And ofc, I don’t mind paying full price for them.

A non-exhaustive list of those I loved:

• Outer Wilds (became my favourite game of all times)
• Inside/Limbo
• Little Nightmares
• Sifu
• The standley parable
• Still awakes the deep
• Gris/Neva
• Firewatch
• Journey/Abzu/The Pathless/Sea of Sword
• Rainworld
• No man’s sky (a special case, I know)
• Cocoon
• Unravel
• Stray
• Below
• Far
• Pacific Drive
• The invincible

I use an app called GoMore in some places in Europe that allows you to rent cars from other peers. The rental process is cheaper and faster–everything is done through the app–and you avoid these shady corpo practices.