As for how popular/powerful Evilore/Gaf is...
I've been on the forum for over 12 years now (holy shit

) and I've worked at several game developers and know lots of gamers, and I'm not exaggerating when I say I literally have not met a single person who knew what GAF was. I don't say that to criticize necessarily, but to question how that works. Gaf is, at the very least, quite popular with mainstream video game news outlets, with many consistently plugging the site when some major story breaks out. But there's this weird disconnect between it being acknowledged by the gaming media, but ignored by the public. You don't have to be a hardcore gamer to know who IGN, Gamespot, Kotaku and hell even Polygon are, but nobody (at least in my experience) has any clue what gaf is. It's somewhat fascinating, actually.