I’ve got mine (in the UK) and really enjoyed the ARG even if I didn’t manage to solve much of the crypto stuff. It was a team effort and I hope they do some more, maybe for LNF. I think they hired a third party company to do ARG as it must be a hell of a lot of work to create and manage.
No, it’s not government funded. It’s funded by the people from a yearly licence fee, so has no ads. This is how it stays politically impartial too (mostly).