Thanks, good job. I always loved that subreddit. The comments there, made by actual historians, were always a treat for a history fan. At this point, it’s a huge repository of reliable knowledge and it would be a shame to lose it.

What the…? It’s such a nonsense business move. The app store now shows this pixel icon when you search for the Reddit app. At first glance, it looks as if it was some shitty clone or something, not the original client.

It shouldn’t if you install it as a separate app.

The rumor you mentioned originated from an article by Jake Adelstein, an American journalist writing about Japan, especially crime/yakuza. He claims he knows a lot of insiders in the yakuza and often covered stories about them.

In one such story, he claims he let a few yakuza guys play Yakuza 3 and they seemed to like the game and even praise some stuff as true to life: https://boingboing.net/2010/08/10/yakuza-3-review.html

However, this article (and others he wrote about the yakuza) may very well be fake - there are many doubts if Adelstein even knew any yakuza at all. I think one of the arguments is that it simply wouldn’t be possible for a ‘gaijin’ reporter to get inside access into the yakuza to be able to talk to them like this, and some of the stories he published are too fantastical, involving sex, martial arts etc. - just makes him hard to believe.

Just saying this because I see this rumor repeated from time to time and while it seems cool, it’s probably just fake.