You don't like excessive padding and useless information thrown into your face? The update is just to sell themes and shit on mobile, there was no UX consultation. Download version 205.15 to get the normal UI back.
Emails, opt-in are fine yeah. I don't mind the little Special offer button at the top either, it's just the pop-up when I'm just trying to check my mails that is really intrusive.
Yeah if you don't pay its fine, but if you have mail plus, they will have pop ups advertising premium. Once you get premium? They start advertising family!
There's lots of information on downloading APKs, the instructions can differ depending on which phone you have.
But essentially you download an APK file from a mirror site and install it. An example being APKMirror, just the APK version will work.
Oh and this is android btw, no idea how you would do it on ios.
The games industry got fucking huge and most people are just mindless consumers who buy whatever is advertised to them. It sounds crazy, but people buy these $70 games, buy the 'deluxe' editions for almost double, then buy loads of cosmetics in game. And they do it every year. All these companies are going to do is milk this mindset, so triple A will never change.
Indie, as you say, is the way to go. Actual games made by passionate people, with (most of the time) no bullshit attached.
Just drive the speed limit and there's no problem. Driving massive multiple ton killing machines is already a massive privilege, if you can't adhere to simple rules of the road, you shouldnt be driving at all.
And the sewer is filled with literal shit, it doesn't make a complaint over a pop-up ad on a paid tier any less valid. Get ya whataboutism out of here!
Sorry, I wasnt calling people mindless, you are right that anyone can enjoy whatever they want. I was referring to 'mindless consumerism', where people arent really frugal and just buy whatever thing the big companies want to you to buy.
And the passion thing, obviously theres a lot of passionate people at big studios, but the leads of such places usually dont and bring it all down in the name of profit for them and their shareholders. Triple A is a money making machine, there's not a lot of innovation there anymore and a lot of the games are very unimaginative, regardless of how passionate the individual developers are.