Cecilia D'Anastasio

The Division 2 won’t be landing on Steam initially and will, in fact, launch on the Epic Games store on March 15, GamesIndustry.biz reports. The Epic Games store is skimming only 12% off sales compared to Steam’s 30%, making it an attractive option for game developers. GamesIndustry.biz added that publisher Ubisoft will be working with…

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, One Month Later

Smash Ultimate is a living game, and one month later, it’s just starting to walk on two legs. Sure, its launch was explosive, but Smash takes on new meaning as fans’ ideas about it evolve. Who’s top tier in the meta? What’s the wackiest ruleset anyone’s come up with? Will we decide a year from…

Middle Eastern Fortnite Players Start Massive Protest For Dedicated Servers

Alaa “DvLZStaTioN” Ebrahim has been missing his sniper shots. The popular Fortnite YouTuber, who has three million subscribers, says it’s not his fault. Nor are the times when his opponents’ shots hit him even as he moves away from the rain of bullets. Ebrahim, who lives in Bahrain, a small island country in the Middle…

Hooray! Just now, beloved ESPer anime Mob Psycho 100‘s second season launched on Crunchyroll. It’s a hilarious, psychedelic twist on shonen anime tropes centered on an innocuous kid who happens to be a powerful psychic. You can read our review of the first season here

The Five Best Anime Of 2018

Anime wasn’t very generous to us in 2018. There weren’t as many wholly original standouts, like in 2017, or 2016’s steady flow of genre-defining pillars. Adding to that, 2018 also gave us a couple stinkers in the “thanks, I hate it” category: an anime about anthropomorphic horse girls who race each other and are idol…

Nintendo Posts Tutorial On How To Find Smash Ultimate‘s Tutorial

Yo dawg, we heard you like tutorials. Today, Nintendo of Europe posted a Smash Ultimate tutorial for how to find Smash Ultimate’s tutorial (via ResetEra user PsychoHydro). Since the game’s December 7 launch, players have complained that Smash doesn’t give them basic pointers on how to play. Weird, right? Especially considering how beginner-friendly Smash is.…

Tips For Playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate [UPDATED]

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has it all, and whether you’re a seasoned pro or a newbie coming in blind, “it all” is a lot. Every fighter from every prior Smash game is available, plus over 100 stages, a lot of wily items, a slew of quality-of-life updates and a somewhat perplexing collectables system called “Spirits.”…

Blizzard Creates Official Catalog Of Overwatch Pros Who Break The Rules

We know who’s been naughty now, thanks to Blizzard’s new website outing Overwatch pros for violating the Overwatch League’s rules and code of conduct. The Overwatch League’s “discipline tracker” is a public list of players who broke league rules, such as by boosting other people’s accounts or being toxic. Next to their infractions, Blizzard lists…

Valve Walks Back Its Stance On Balancing Artifact Cards

Digital card game Artifact received some crowd-pleasing changes yesterday, and thank God, because players have been bleeding out of the game since its late November launch. The new update gives Artifact a leveling system, which comes with rewards like card packs, and independent skill ratings, which starts at one and caps at 75. “Over the…

It’s hard to put into words why Fortnite—as repetitive as it can be as a game—has so immersed a huge number of gamers. “Fortnite Isn’t A Game, It’s A Place,” a new article by writer Owen Williams, described Fortnite’s appeal as a hang-out spot rather than as your bread-and-butter shooter.

Smash Ultimate‘s Big Boys Finally Kick Butt

There was a time when a popular Smash flex was showing someone that you could even beat them with Bowser, the hulking, slow-to-move Mario monster. Before Bowser’s huge form had even initiated an attack, it’s likely his opponent had already gotten in a shot or two. It’s not that he wasn’t powerful—he was, when he…

FBI Seizes 15 DDoS-For-Hire Websites

Today, the FBI announced it took action against 15 domains that allegedly helped take down other people’s websites, game servers and other online services through distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The seizures comes a week before Christmas, which, the FBI says, is “a period historically plagued by prolific DDoS attacks in the gaming world.” The FBI…

What We Like (And Don’t Like) About Unlocking Smash Ultimate‘s Fighters

Since Smash Ultimate’s launch, a debate has been brewing among fans new and old: Is the fighter-unlocking system in Smash Ultimate bullshit, or actually super fun? Kotaku has gathered four Smash players, also new and old, to talk through their thinking on the issue. Cecilia D’Anastasio: “Everyone’s here” in Smash Ultimate. Wooooo. Wooo! Smash Ultimate’s…

Smash Ultimate patched the game last night to make its crappy online experience significantly less crappy. After some time with the game post-patch, it appears that Smash made players’ preferred online play rules “more highly prioritized.” We have updated our article on Smash online to reflect that change.

Top Riot Executive Suspended Without Pay Following Investigation Over Workplace Misconduct

Earlier this week, Riot’s CEO sent an e-mail to employees describing the punishment its COO, Scott Gelb, will face after multiple employees alleged that, as a comedy bit, he has repeatedly touched subordinates’ balls or butt or farted in their faces. Several employees tell Kotaku that his punishment—two months of unpaid leave and training—is far…

Twitch Sale Of Curse Media Will Combine Two Popular Gaming Wikis

Wiki site Fandom announced yesterday that they will acquire Curse Media, which runs gaming wiki site Gamepedia, from Twitch. Twitch owned Curse Media for just two years. “We’ve signed a definitive agreement to acquire Curse Media from Twitch, Inc; including all media assets and employees,” a Fandom rep said in an e-mail to Kotaku. Fandom…

I Liked Hoverbike Racing Game Desert Child‘s Pitch More Than Its Execution

At E3, amid the booming explosions of big-budget game trailers and sterile setups for pricy gaming PCs, I stumbled upon a cute racing game called Desert Child. It looked like a western, cyberpunk racer and had some Cowboy Bebop flair, all rendered in chic pixel art, and immediately I was intrigued. Desert Child is a…

It’s time to toss your London Spitfire jersey in the wash because the Overwatch League just announced its 2019 schedule The first match will take place on February 14 and include four games—one more nightly match than the 2018 season’s, perhaps because there are now a whopping 20 teams. First up, we’ll see a reprisal…

Super Smash Bros. Still Can’t Get Online Right [UPDATE]

Ten years after Nintendo released its first online Smash game, it still hasn’t gotten the online experience right. Marketed as the most complete Smash experience, with the most fighters, the best graphics, and the greatest quality-of-life updates, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for Switch appears at face to be a no-holds-barred improvement on the series as…

Magic: The Gathering is getting a pro league, publisher Wizards of the Coast announced yesterday. 32 top players will get the change to win a combined $10 million in prizes. Their contracts, Wizards says, will be for $75,000, directly addressing concerns Magic pros had about earning sub-par money. Some top players might even come out…