> While this technique is seldomly used on the web, it’s used all the time in video games

Seldomly used now, perhaps. Is the author unfamiliar with the history of the technique? This was everywhere on the web. It’s how Facebook served almost every icon and UI asset.

Back in the day we used 'background-position' to slice up the sprite map. There are articles on A List Apart describing this that are over 20 years old now. It was also the underpinning of the site’s legendary “sliding windows” technique, which was dominant on the web for some time.

E: I should add that one reason for its popularity was that we didn’t have HTTP multiplexing yet and so you wanted a small count of images/resources on the page

the technique was everywhere for static icons, not for animated images