A VPS is like 5 bucks. Which isn’t nothing but when used as a redundancy or place to send (reasonably sized) backups, it’s cheaper than most alternatives. It’s also still a form of “self hosting”, at least for me.

Exporting, maybe on a schedule, to a keepass to keep somewhere, also works of course. But when hosting the only/main instance at home you’ll have at least one single point of failure, most likely many. Internet connection, server, network/switches, …

That you have to decide for yourself, and it probably also depends on what the bonus is. Functionally they are bribing you to choose the worse choice for you. The bribe might be worth it. If the game turns out payable and stable, it’s all good. If it’s a buggy mess, unfinished or you need to wait for like 5 patches anyway, was it still worth it?

To me there are also very few games that I need to play the moment they come out. I probably can’t finish my backlog of games in my life time as it is, so a few days or even months wouldn’t change much for me. Is rather wait and not fall into the marketing trap of “but free stuff”.

They actually so this quite often

For me personally an ad is when I’m being sold something. I can’t be sold something that is free and open. So someone showcasing their paid (but self hosted) service is an ad. Someone telling me about their (open) project is not.

And when someone wants to use either and asks for help, is also (obviously) not an ad. Unless we see a flood of accounts posting trivial questions about a paid service to draw attention to it, but I kinda doubt it.

While I’m fine with people wanting to self-host stuff with closed software (this includes Windows and Plex, btw), I personally am not interested in having ads of any kind in the community.

To me self hosting is about controlling your data. While I wouldn’t use proprietary software myself for this, I just want to make it clear that I’m fine with people asking for help it advice about it. Just not ads, of any kind.

As always “it depends”. Especially with frequent and deep sales it highly depends on the title. But given that it has to exist on both platforms for this to even be an option to begin with, it might be true more often than not.

This might also be an additional consideration, that selling titles is an option for physical PS5 titles. Assuming the discs can always be sold and copies aren’t tied to your digital account anyway once you play them.

Anyone who pre-orders a digital product that can’t actually run out of stock is a true mystery to me. Just wait and see. If you’re I’ve of those eager to pay this, you’ve already waited literally years. Add a few days, see if it’s actually playable and not a buggy mess.

Be warned that depending on the grinder, this can be incredibly bad for it.