if you can run a private server, you can get rid of all ‘phone home’ requirements.
so you just need a cracked copy of the game itself. luckily it is completely legal to remove digital locks on anything you bought in many countries (not the usa though).
age verification is just a BS strawman. do you remember when we where young? we would access stuff and find ways to buy stuff. but whenever there was a reasonable but fair gap, it would be much harder to get whatever we wanted: buying weed was so much easier, than buying alcohol (without the appropriate age).
pirating is easy (even i figured it out before having enough money to buy movies & games). so the kids will just pirate that stuff and get their way anyway. age verification at the store makes so much more sense. sure, there are ways to circumvent those. but it is a reasonable stop block.
easy self-check for these things:
is it OK for group A to do X? is it OK for group B to do X? …
if the answer is not the same for all the groups you can reasonably think of, something about your morals is off.
not everyone will agree whether X is OK to do. but at least you can detect, whether you are biased yourself.
i think you are right: it is time to walk away.
when i switched to lemmy, many communities i was into at reddit, did not exist or have very little posts. over time i discovered other communities and am less online in general. it is a getting used to it, but overall a net positive.
lemmy has a lot of the same look and feel. but they are not the same.
here, the video which started all: https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a/change-your-profile-picture-to-clippy.:e
and where he goes a bit more into detail and talks about many of the points seen in this thread: https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a/you-changed-your-profile-to-clippy-now:6