A lot of the issues reported here, started showing up on my device after each OS update, but VLC didn't push any updates for over a year now... VLC is king, but what went wrong?
Edit: I think I saw a post on Mastodon saying it something to do with Google Play Store policies change, but what about the Fdroid version.. ?
The main problem is that VLC's minimum SDK is still targeting Android 4.2, this is an issue with a ton of apps (games specially), which basically renders them incompatible/buggy with modern Android versions.
Being honest here, all app developers should target Android 8 as their minimum nowadays, as anything below that can't even browse the web anymore.