The Geeks have similar stories.

I'm sure they do, especially in their D&D Campaigns.

For me it did require it on the Switch Demo. Maybe you were offline or in a country where they don't do that or something?

Any ad supported service is objectively not free. No thanks.

Well of course not, why should it be free? Neither Meta nor Google, TikTok etc. are charitable Organizations, they are businesses with the intent to make money. Either you pay or you see Ads, or don't use the service, it's that simple.

Youtube still pays those Creators money for their content, some dedicated enough even do that as their job and live off of that youtube money, some very, very comfortably. If YT (or a similar entity for that matter) didn't exist and get money trough ads and subscriptions how many of those creators do you think would still make content, let alone live off of it?

Everyone here screams how bad and greedy YT/Google is, but when it comes down to giving the creators they watch money trough other means (patreon etc.) who actually would do that? yeah...no one.