What sketchy ass VPN’s have you been using?
Get something from a well known provider like Proton, iVPN, or Mullvad.
You are playing on on hardware that’s 10 years newer than the game was designed for. That mod even lists SSD as the primary reason for the advancement, with it not making much difference running on an HDD.
Sounds like a great mod for today’s equipment though.
DVD players used to be (probably still are?) region locked, and those didn’t require internet service either. The region was either hard coded or could only be changed like 5 times.
It was an attempt to enforce geographic licensing fees and stop piracy.
Restaurants absolutely did and do have a problem with that, and I question the authority with which you state that there are no appreciable monetary damages from amazon denying a small business additional sales opportunities.
If you’re doing that you have zero need to bow to any single credit card company.
I don’t even read 90% of the credit card offers I get, I have plenty of cards, and they are all at zero. Go ahead, cancel me. I’ll have a new one in 15 minutes.