Gamers Deprived of Leaks and Rumors for Undetermined Hours as Serena Williams’ Husband Alexis Ohanian’s Platform Reddit Suffers Blackout

Reddit, the popular microblogging site co-founded by Serena Williams‘ husband Alexis Ohanian, is suffering an unprecedented blackout. This has made it difficult for gamers to access leaks and potential rumors about their favorite games. The blackout comes as the latest in a series of protests organized by Reddit users against the API changes announced by the website in April.

Reddit API changes has led to an unprecedented blackout

Over the years, Reddit became the choice for many users because of its lenient API regulations, where third-party application developers could access and use the information for their own products. The new change in regulations would see Reddit charge for such Application Interface Programming details, which would make it difficult for third-party app developers to utilize the information for free.

Read more Reddit Outraged With Apex Legends Season 5

As a protest to the API changes being made, several third-party Reddit apps have declared that they’ll shut down indefinitely starting next month. Furthermore, 5 of the biggest communities on the platform have also decided to showcase a shutdown for two days from June 12. The Reddit blackout has prompted many developers to “go dark“, and non-subscribers cannot access their content anymore.

Some of the subreddits that have taken to the vanguard by going dark are r/Music, r/gaming, r/science and r/awww. Each of these subreddits has millions of followers, which makes the ramifications of the proposed API to be potentially game-changing. For a long time, any third-party developer could request Reddit for data without actually getting in on an application.

The gaming community loses a major source of information

Since API isn’t the application itself, data can be transferred without revealing the minute details of the apps. With the proposed changes, it would become difficult for developers to request data without paying for the same.

As more and more subreddits join the protests against the changes, the gaming community faces a serious problem: loss of access to information on upcoming releases as well as rumors and detail leaks. With some subreddits hinting towards indefinite blackout possibilities, the community may be cut-off from reliable sources of information, which has raised serious concerns and debates on the regulation changes announced by Reddit.

Here are some tweets slamming the API changes by Reddit.

In an open letter by the Reddit moderators, admins of the platform mentioned that “The potential loss of these services due to the pricing change would significantly impact our ability to moderate efficiently, thus negatively affecting the experience for users in our communities and for us as mods and users ourselves.” Now the community looks forward to June 14 when some of the subreddits will become active once more and decide on further course of action.

Watch this story Serena Williams Husband Alexis Ohanian Prophecies The Future of Video Gaming