Since my retirement, one of the things I am doing a lot of every day is watching YouTube. I am watching more YouTube than I am watching Twitch, Netflix, and TV together. So what I am hearing a lot from various YouTube content creators is "please, support me on Patreon" or "please, support me with a paid channel membership". At one point, a few years ago, I had several such channel subscriptions running on YouTube and Twitch. However, it quickly turned out that I was switching between too many channels too often. Subscribing to many channels is expensive, and even something small like $5 per month is a lot if you then watch that channel only a few hours that month. So I stopped subscribing to individual channels.

On the other hand, I didn't want to be a complete freeloader. The solution I found was YouTube Premium, something I considered a win-win: I get ad-free YouTube, while the content creators get around 5 times more revenue from me than they would get from a non-premium viewer. Also the money is distributed as a function of how many hours I am watching what, which both seems very fair, and rewards long-form content better than advertising revenue does. As I do watch 6-hour videos from NeverKnowsBest sometimes, or long actual play videos from various creators, I do like to encourage long-form content.

But there is another business model on YouTube that I also like: Affiliate links. If I am watching videos of some content creator about some game, and that video makes me want to buy that game, I might as well use the affiliate link that will give that creator a small commission. Steam doesn't offer affiliate links, but various online shops that sell Steam keys do. Which means that by using that affiliate link I support a content creator I like *and* frequently get the game slightly cheaper than I would have gotten it on Steam directly.

Which gets us back to Transport Fever 3. I have been watching content from German streamer Steinwallen a lot, for example his long and still ongoing Europa Universalis V playthrough as Scotland. And recently he started playing Transport Fever 3 (he gets advanced access to Paradox games), and that looks quite interesting to me. So I'll watch a few more of his videos about that game, but then I am seriously considering to use his affiliate link to buy a Steam key for that game tomorrow.