Summary & Key Takeaways ​

• Simon Willison performed a detailed performance audit of an article on PCGamer.com.
• The analysis covers loading speed, render-blocking resources, and opportunities for improvement.
• PCGamer is a high-traffic commercial site with real constraints — ad networks, CMS overhead — making this more representative than tutorial examples.

Our Commentary ​

Real sites make the best test subjects because they carry actual baggage: third-party scripts, ad networks, legacy markup. An audit of a site like PCGamer shows what performance trade-offs look like under real publishing constraints, not what the ideal Lighthouse score looks like in isolation. Worth reading with your own site's compromises in mind.