Yet the game still constantly crashes and has weapons and armor that have no effects.

The option to skip was there 20 minutes after launch until now.

It said required in the popup, but still had a skip button with no consequences.

I had a similar issue and it was due to a typo in my Timezone field for Compose

It was a calculated decision

I want to blame the company but from their point of view this business model works so I understand why it keeps happening.

Steam refunds are great for situations like these but I doubt the average casual knows how easy it is. The other platforms are much stricter on refunds.

There’s also the culture shift of gamers defending broken releases with “at least they fixed it!” Or “they released a roadmap for future fixes” that encourages early releases.

A lot of the player count on steam is users AFK idling so they don’t have to get stuck in queue again. My discord friend list is a ton of idle users on Helldivers 2 all day and night

Likely upnp or nat-pnp. Enabling "Enable automatic port mapping"within Jellyfin will accomplish the same thing without needing a paid Plex subscription.

Port forwarding doesn’t require VPN.

Does Plex Sharing not open up ports either manually or via UPnpP?

How so? You can use tailscale/wireguard or just port forward to remotely access.

No need to use Plex

https://jellyfin.org/

I stopped buying on GOG when they shifted their stance on DRM suddenly and allowed it into their store.

Have they changed stances in the last year or two? Maybe, but they already lost my trust with their initial responses.