I just want to play fun games that have a great and comprehendible story.

They would also need to be natively made for PC (along with any other platform that the devs/pubs might want). I understand why console ports exist but one can wish.

Some AAA game examples/concerns off the top of my head:

MGS V ? Fun gameplay, couldn't make head or tail of the story without viewing content from others, and still I feel it's way too confusing.

AC ? Things were in a good direction from a story standpoint at one point in time years ago but they lost it, didn't enjoy the new RPG-like direction as much either. Gameplay was a power fantasy thing I guess. Whether I like it or not is dependent on my mood during the session.

Skyrim ? Fun game, never got around to actually "finishing" the game because there would always be a break and I would entirely forget where and what I was doing earlier.

Souls-likes ? I don't have a problem admitting that my skills are pretty sucky. Effort required to the rewards are pretty bad for me, and there is no particular story that I have seen other than community theories.

I'm working on my years long backlog, in case anyone wants to make recommendations it'll probably take a long time for me to get to it if it isn't in the current list...

What is your threat model like ? Who are you intending to guard yourself against ?

Is it an assembled PC or a pre-built ? Pre-builts may come with some form of tracking. OS support also may be a concern on some pre-builts.

Maybe something like Debian 12 testing might be a good Linux option to consider, of course Windows or Mac are not recommended for the privacy conscious amongst us. Debian is not the most user friendly to get installer image of, but it has a fairly straightforward GUI based setup for a fresh install.

In case Windows is a requirement then probably look into the Tron script, helps automate a lot of things you might need as privacy settings (among other actions performed by the script).

Note: These are to be treated as opinions, not advice.

Reading this, I'm not able to interpret what emotion applies here.

To get governments interested in it... for tracking it's own netizens... because just about everyone is dealing with CSAM!

TL;DR of the article - Arcane > Cyberpunk Edgerunners > Castlevania > Sonic Boom > The Last of Us > The Witcher.

The entire joke that Last Week Tonight with John Oliver ran about this was fantastic.

I like the phrase "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely".

KOSA is not the only thing one should be worried about, illiterates from UK are bringing in an Online Safety Bill which needs all services with encryption to provide a backdoor for the UK government under the reasoning of "monitoring for CSAM content".

This doesn't just impact UK citizens, but will do for the world.

If I recall correctly, Australia did something similar.

Interesting to see how the 5-eyes try to push similar dumb ideas together.

I see, but how is this different in a phone app? Wouldn't the request still be made to a backend?

Uhh.. not clear on what you're claiming here... you can validate the traffic is going to the expected instance using a web app, without requiring any special software by running Developer tools and heading to the network tab.

Unless the book is being bought directly from the writer, isn't it really the publisher who is gaining the rewards? My understanding is that the writer is paid a lumpsum for rights of a book by a publisher.

If the entire motto is "benefit of others", the writer themselves can publish it for the public to read openly, or make it a collaborative project where their and other people's contributions are added together.

It's not black and white, both sides of a piracy debate (much like anything else) have their arguments, and could have had reached a better medium.

Over here we consider Broadcom is where things go to die a slow death. There should be some form of rule if a company is not actively working on their products / retiring them then they need to make it freely accessible to the public.

Probably as a result of this: https://youtu.be/B5d_MPw1nQs ?

Regarding the undemocratic part, let's not forget it was a part of the Axis. Ideologies of leadership don't change so easily...