I think the "massive giveaways" and "free game" threads are redundant. One, or both, should be closed.

Then, have three threads:

a) a free games thread. All you have to do to get the game is click a button. May need a free account and/or launcher, or otherwise require you to do something free, like give email for a newsletter. (gog, steam, epic, indiegala, etc). I don't see a value in splitting this further into a pure free game thread (push a button) and a free game with steps (acct, newletter, whatever).

b) a free games with subscription thread. You need to pay for an account, or buy something, or otherwise spend more than 0.01 money to get "free" games. (amazon prime)

c) free shovelware games. (itch, bigfish)

Maybe have a fourth thread letting people know about game bundles. They wouldn't be free, but they'd be very cheap. Like the old thread we used to have alerting people to Humble bundles, back when they had decent bundles.

A thing getting in the way seems to be threads opened by gamers who are no longer active, so they can't set the rules for their threads and mods don't want to touch them. So maybe have a rule that these threads would automatically expire at the end of each year, so if the gamer is gone, a new gamer opens a thread. And even if they're still active, thread rules could be adjusted for problems that came up later.

Ultimately, there seems to be too much squabbling over what games go where. We should reach a consensus and then make new threads. And if the threads are restarted each year, they can be tweaked each year so we don't keep constantly having discussions of what's "appropriate" for each thread.