Good news: video games are still fucking awesome. Since it costs nothing to make one, weird and smart and cool people from all across the world are trying the craziest stuff. It's true they're purchasable through steam, mostly. But there's spectacularly creative stuff at low or no cost. For example, skimming my steam right now I see:

- Tales From Off Peak City (surrealist walking simulator with a film camera mechanic; 9.99$)

- Baba is You (sokoban puzzler; 14.99$)

- Straftat (brutalist/surrealist competitive shooter set to jungle music focusing on randomized community-map style alternative fps gamemodes; free)

- Untitled Goose Game (light puzzle coop set to dynamically scored classical piano music; 8.99$)

- Norco (prescient pre-gen-ai pixel art VN about AI, faith, and the environment; 5.24$)

- Brazillian Drug Dealer 3: I opened a Portal To Hell In The Favela Trying To Revive Mit Aia I Need to Close It (it's quake; 3.75$)

I resonate with what you said, but I kinda don't know what it has to do with the article

The article defines guilty displeasures as things you don't like but you hope you like. I don't think you hope yourself to like modern AAA games.

Depends on what sort of games you are into, but Baldur's Gate 3 is modern and amazing. Great single player campaign with mod support. No DLCs or expansion packs, you get it all in the base game, finished, done.

I agree with you with respect to smart, cloud, etc

I think we should support people who are uncomfortable about this stuff, don't ridicule them with "tinfoil hat much?" type sentiments

By the way, GOG.com treats you well wrt cloud/privacy/etc. All games they sell are drm-free and can be downloaded, installed and played offline.