don’t be so hard on yourself. over time, we all just stop paying so much attention to every single internet drama, it’s tiring and we have better stuff to do.
and the point is that epic games has been really liberal with the freebies for their users ever since they set up shop as a competitor to steam. they give away a game every couple of weeks and even more on certain special seasons, including triple a games. someone following them since the begging must have a library well over a hundred games now, completely for free. despite that, they are finding very hard to find sympathy and market share among certain sectors of the gaming community, because their store is just not at the level of steam and some other questionable practices, even so far as to still be operating at a loss even now years later. you can see the giveaway games just below the current discounts at the home page or in the free games page almost at the top https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/free-games and of you use telegram there’s a channel that notify you every time there’s something new for free https://t.me/epicfreegames
Didn’t uninstall any of my AdBlock layers, but YouTube didn’t survive.
Even though I actually never saw the famous popup, the whole thing made me take steps after months of feeling that the recommendations sucked and I was often wasting lots of time watching stuff I didn’t even like.
Now I’m actually getting back into reading and audiobooks, and using invidious for the occasional watch.