True, but thankfully there are a lot of choices in that space, and it’s constantly growing. And if there aren’t, a lot of times it’s possible to make one (or buy someone’s) using an esp32 or similar. Zigbee, zwave, and matter devices should all be possible to run local only.
The critic vs audience score divide is pretty telling for some movies. Ant-Man: Quantumania and both Venom movies come to mind as movies that were critically panned but had pretty high audience score. They’re nothing spectacular but still dumb fun movies.
Stringing them along and wasting more of their time and money was the not a dick option? I’d say that’s the be more of a dick option. I’m all for walking out on a shitty job, but it sounds like their worst crime was not giving you as good an offer as somewhere else.
Even better, when they film vertically, and then encode it to widescreen. Ensuring that no matter how you view it on a phone it’s microscopic.