Yeah I agree with you here. A lot of Trackmania players are annoyed by Trackmania’s $20 a year subscription and have called to make it F2P with cosmetic microtransactions, but I’m pretty happy that hasn’t happened. There isn’t even any DLC. It is really nice to see not have to see ads to pay more money for stuff.
I don’t think they do much investigative journalism, but I’ve found Rock Paper Shotgun to have some more thoughtful pieces among their more traditional reporting.
Steam is a massive worldwide market, and the Steam Deck isn’t offered everywhere. Chinese users for example have to import it, so not many are used there.