I won’t buy any paradox games because they invariably end up with 100 DLCs each

even the worst corporations are on the right side of something from time

Well, corporations (best and worst) are always on their own side… which sometimes happens to be the same as their customers’ :)

With something so niche as pico-8, you are probably better off just biting the bullet… In your shoes I’d investigate if there are viable FOSS alternatives and, failing that, just fork the 15USD the developer of PICO-8 asks for.