This is one of the main reasons I use Kagi. I have sites like fandom and fextralife blocked in my search results.

One of the things I miss about early internet years was all the independent fan sites and forums people had. Now, so much is just posted to these garbage platforms that control everything.

I think Mike Mahardy from Polygon is alright, but generally I find their content leans into social commentary more than I want in a gaming outlet. I respect that some people want that, and I'm glad these sites exist for them.

As someone who doesn't follow vtubers, I can confirm Holocure is excellent, and obviously made with love. Every character has a unique playstyle, and the aesthetc is a nice departure from the gloom common to the genre.

Fextralife embeds their twitch stream into their site, artificially inflating their twitch viewer numbers, which in turn hurts smaller streamers since fextralife will be sorted first by viewer count.

I'll recommend a few from different genres:

• Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (later FE games also allowed the player to choose between male and female)
• Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (or Bloodstained: RotN for a newer, but aging, game)
• A Hat In Time (not sure if this is really that old but it's an amazing platformed)
• any Touhou game
• Life Is Strange (again, not sure if you'd consider this old)

Did Elon buy Hoyoverse too?

Yeah, mine is unpopular d(-_☆)

I've listened to 8-4 Play on and off for years. I usually check back in with them when a new Monster Hunter game/expansion comes out because few other podcasters I've come across really cover it with any depth.

I've tried to get into their branching podcasts. The one I enjoyed the most was probably Fire Escape with Dan, Mike and Mary because they have the strongest group dynamic IMO.

I'd like one if still available, please.

I never really read PC Gamer. I used to subscribe to PSM and Nintendo Power. By the time I got a PC capable of running games, magazines were already on their way out lol

If it's in a setting where open conversations are normal, then I think it's fine as long as their speaker volume isn't louder than any other normal conversation. To me, there's no difference between two people talking in person and two people talking over the phone.

If someone doesn't want to hold it to their ear because they want to video call or just browse their phone while they talk, I don't see the problem.

The article might as well be "Valve Says Counter-Strike 2 for macOS Not Happening Because We Have a Vested Interest In Selling Steam Decks" just as Apple isn't porting iMessage (and other apps) to Android because they have a vested interest in selling iPhones.