Let me fix that for you: “When an AI bubble pops…”

My experiences with these kinds of headhunters has been “mixed”, trending toward “poor”. Most were useless. They would show up with “opportunities” then I’d never hear from them again. These people/companies typically, as I understand it, work “in bulk”. They’re just harvesting as many resumes as they can, throwing buckets of them at employers and hoping something sticks. They aren’t really going to put any meaningful effort into helping you.

That said, a rare few have really stepped up. The last one I worked with back around 2012, really went out of his way to get me in with a company and secure me a good offer. So they do exist. But, in my experience at least, they are rare.

You’re in a tricky position. You’re looking for a relatively senior position. You’ll be up against a fair amount of competition for somewhat rare roles with very specific requirements. There’s just not going to be a ton of those director+ level roles out there at any given time. But don’t give up and don’t give up hope. Those recruiters do exist, as do those jobs. Good luck!

I haven’t worked with it myself as I’m not working on Japanese right now, but I had a recommendation recently for Satori Reader.

Anyone considering attending a protest of any kind should probably at least skim over some of this guidance:

https://ssd.eff.org/module/attending-protest

It’s definitely a risky move, for the reasons you already called out. But sane? Yeah, probably. I’ve known a few people over the years that have done similar moves: dropping out of high-pay/prestige positions due to the stresses and general unhappiness. They’ve almost always ended up generally happier for the change. Just don’t be afraid to acknowledge if the move isn’t working. Don’t talk yourself into staying in a bad situation because you don’t want to admit that the move isn’t working.

(but also: drop an update in a few weeks. I’m now curious to see how this goes for you.)

As with most things in life, it’s probably a combination of factors. But please don’t beat yourself up over it.

There’s a lot of good advice already in this thread; no reason to repeat it. One thing you might look at the Proton Github issues list. Occasionally, when a game otherwise has a gold rating but I have problems with it, I can find some interesting corner-case details here. Here’s a link that you could use to find Anno 1404 issue, as an example: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+“anno+1404”

The other thing I would suggest is that you be more verbose when describing problems. You did a great job sharing the high-level issue and your system’s details, but what do you mean by “didn’t work”? Does it fail to launch? Does it launch but not do X? Those details can go a long way towards troubleshooting (though I do understand that your post was meant to not be game-specific).

Oh, and stay away from Cracks. Unless you’re VERY sure about what you’re doing, it’s just inviting trouble.

“continuing to push the boundaries of consent.”

If by “push the boundaries” you meant “completely ignore them”, then yes. This kind of behavior from MS, or any vendor, should always be considered strictly unacceptable.