Then Linus responded pretty poorly (and ended up stepping down as CEO and is now a chief creative something or other iirc)

Linus didn’t step down in response to this. I don’t remember the exact timelines, but he either stepped down before this, or was in already in the process of transitioning to the new CEO when this happened.

The Trine series is pretty fun. It’s a 2.5d puzzle platformer game. There are some combat bits, but most of the game is puzzles. I’d recommend the second one.