I totally agree, but I find it funny that you started by decrying the hype the series has received, and then almost immediately after claimed it to be one of the best pieces of journalism you've heard recently. :)
It's hardly a peripheral though. VR games are incompatible with traditional displays, and the development requirements are quite a bit more strict (low latency, high framerate).
It's quite a stretch to say that VR is "just a new way to display a game," in my opinion.
I don't understand the exclusivity outrage. It seems entirely fair to me for a platform holder to expect something in return for funding development of a game.
Consoles have had exclusives since time immemorial and no one seems to bat an eye when it happens. What makes this case special?
I think what OP is getting at is that you can drop the "if you are [side of the political spectrum]-leaning, then..." clause and lose nothing substantive from the argument. It's there exclusively to poke at the opposition while adding nothing of value.
I find the UI of Dwarf Fortress completely impenetrable, but am fascinated by the level of depth and granularity in the systems underlying the game.
If anyone is interested in the game, I recommend grabbing the Lazy Newb Pack[0] which comes with a few utilities that will make your experience slightly less infuriating.
My problem with the news feed is how non-deterministic the results are. There have been so many cases where I will see a post/photo/video that I find interesting, but fuck me if I ever want to find it again on a different device or at some point in the future if I didn't bookmark it or remember who posted it and when. It always seems like a random shuffling of the deck when I load the page, and it's incredibly frustrating.
In case anyone shares my confusion: they aren't talking about unlocking in the sense of removing carrier restrictions, but rather in the sense of disabling the security features of the device to access the data stored on it.