Nope, 8bitdo (via their eshop) ships directly from China to Canada, alongside a number of other countries.
The change is only wrt shipping to US.

Not exactly, you need Steam to install it, but then per PCGW’s wiki:

DRM-free when launched directly via <path-to-game>\SwGame\Binaries\Win64\SwGame-Win64-Shipping.exe while EA app is not installed.

I can’t confirm for Steam, since I only have the game on EA app, but the game’s wiki page on PCGW shows the same DRM-free info (with correct launch steps).

You’re right, they do - this Steam DRM-free games list shows Jedi Fallen Order is the most recent DRM-free EA published game on Steam afaict.
Same goes for DRM-free games on the EA app.

Per their website:

As a non-profit that engages with a number of stakeholder groups across Canada’s internet, CIRA believes that transparency is essential to good governance.

They also detail their compensation and expenses further down that page.

I would probably recommend Bazzite as a gaming (and user-friendly, in many ways) OS alternative instead of Pop!_OS.
It is very simple to set up and use, and comes with multiple gaming-related tweaks by default.

For those in Western Canada, a lot of these products seem to be available at London Drugs - I’ve found X-Pur and Curaprox at least.

Sorry, I won’t be able to help since I don’t have Blue Dragon, but when you mention making changes to config files, is that in reference to info in this thread / google sheets?

As enjoyable as ever to read!
I think you might have missed the link to Nightdive Studios’ future endeavours? Or Voyager is not showing it at least.

I almost didn’t mention my game of the moment - I’ve been diving deep into Hollow Knight on the Deck, I just wish it supported HDR but otherwise it’s an experience like no other.

I got my launch day PS5 from London Drugs, it was the easiest (not that it was, by any means, easy) to order from at the time.

I finished a couple of games last week, SotN and Sayonara: Wild Hearts.

I’m currently back on DOS2 and I quite enjoy the slow pace of the game.
I might also attempt another playthrough of Bloodborne.

100%, their “Famous Burger” is really not bad and a sizeable portion too

I think web hosting shouldn’t be an issue either way, but once you’re scaling up and trying to use more of their stack, the seams start to crack.

Realistically, I don’t think there’s any good competitor, or not at a scale which would make sense. Finding local/regional cloud providers is usually not an issue.
At larger scale, it feels like we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, with US cloud providers on the one hand and CN ones on the other, and barely any serious competitor outside of that - OVH would be an option, if reliability, tech support, performance and features are not a priority…
That’s my personal takeaway anyway, from professional experience with OVH over the past 5 years.

I finished Pentiment yesterday, what an absolute masterpiece. It’s certainly not for everyone - and I initially hesitantly added it to my backlog for this year as a very different game from what I’m used to - but it resonated so much with me.

I also started Castlevania: SOTN, which I quite enjoy so far - metroidvanias are usually hit or miss for me so I’m going in with tempered expectations.
And I’m attempting a fresh playthrough of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, which I shelved a couple years ago.

I’ve used canhost recently and can’t complain - they offered fairly cheap .ca domains compared to what I could find elsewhere.

If you’re happy with OVH as it is, then I don’t think it can get much worse.
I really wish OVH would get it together and be a serious competitor to other (US) cloud providers…

A quick local search shows quite a few sub-$300 used Pixel 7, youmight be able to find something in that range?

I’ve been using Graphene for 2 years on a (at the time) $400 Pixel 6 Pro - I’m sure you can find a cheap Pixel 6, 6a, or even 6 Pro, to try it out. The 7 might also be in that ballpark now?

What mods did you end up with?
I shelved RDR2 a while ago (year and a half ago?) but would like to get back to it at some point, likely with some QoL enhancements

I started Pentiment last week and am now wearing my detective hat - I can’t wait to see what’s gonna happen next.

I’m also playing Eigengrau, a shmup with elements of a twin-stick shooter - it’s not bad!