Man, so much to read. I'll get there.
From the intro I can say this, things have changed. I recently saw some posts on Twitter where people were getting upset about games being called homebrew. The arguments were they are no longer done by an individual, game quality has increased, distribution deals, etc. I may be adding some of my own thoughts there, but the jist was they are more like Indie releases now and labelling them as homebrew was derogatory.
Ten years ago, I got reamed for calling a thread on NA the homebrew price guide. Why? Because I was including repros in the list that was being disrespectful to developers who actually made new games. Homebrew was a badge of honor, don't sully it. The Twitter posts, mad at using homebrew because it was disrespectful to the teams. The weird thing was I don't think it was any of the creators on Twitter, just all the fans that were pissed off.
I was going to talk about this in a new Aftermarket Panel. Crazy how times change.