be religious if I have a conscience

What’s the point of religion if you’re already capable of deciding what’s right and wrong?

a sign of utter desperation on the human’s part.

Yes it seems to be the same underlying issue that leads some people to throw money at only fans streamers and such like. A complete starvation of personal contact that leads people to willingly live in a fantasy world.

But once you leave Steam […] it gets a lot worse

Heroic Games Launcher is pretty great for games from GOG and Epic. You can run games with Proton just fine.