Overwatch’s feisty dwarf engineer Torbjorn has long been considered a“troll pick.” In my experience, it’s common for teammates’ blood pressure to skyrocket whenever players pick him. We already knew Torbjorn was getting a much-needed overhaul, and today, Overwatch’s game director Jeff Kaplan finally announced what Torbjorn 2.0 will look like. “The goal of all of…
There’s a reason why YouTube’s “trending” icon is a flame. Influence on the $100 billion video sharing site grows uncontested, spreads to whatever is closest to it and can destroy whatever it feeds on. For years now, a certain brand of pundit has flourished on YouTube by peddling videos that purport to fly in the…
In the lawless, wild west industry that is streaming video games, and the surprising gold rush that has gamers tearing up their I-9s, an time-honored line of work is now arriving on the scene: debt collection. Forty outstanding bills sat in Omeed Dariani’s accounting system when we spoke last week. “And a third of them…
Adam “Armada” Lindgren, a longtime Super Smash Bros. Melee top player, today announced his retirement from one vs. one Melee tournament matches, the pro’s bread and butter for a decade. Citing “severe motivational issues,” Lindgren said that “If I can’t have fun doing it, then there’s no point in doing it.”
When Fortnite developers released the game’s notorious rocket launcher, surely they knew they had designed a fatal long-range weapon. Always crafty, Fortnite players quickly discovered something else about these rockets: They’re nifty ways to get around the map. As it turns out, they’d stumbled upon something Fortnite’s developers hadn’t planned for. Today, Apple published an…
What started out as a typical Weather Channel hurricane report took a turn when the broadcaster submerged himself in nine feet of digital flood water. The hyper-realistic visualization was created with Unreal Engine, which powers video games like Fortnite, Ark: Survival Evolved and Street Fighter V. Yikes, though!
Here we are. Earth. Full of things as usual. One of those things will be Katamari Damacy on the Nintendo Switch. The 2004 cult classic will be remastered in HD in its first appearance on a Nintendo console in Winter, 2018: We’ll be rolling our anticipation until then. Update: It’s also coming to PC!
One Super Smash Bros. Melee fan manually counted how many turnips Melee pro Adam “Armada” Lindgren, a Peach main, pulled in 2018 He counted 3,048. And from this data, he analyzed Armada’s turnip strategy on a variety of Melee stages. Woah
Diablo III Eternal Collection, what Blizzard calls its “definitive” version of the role-playing game, is coming to the Nintendo Switch on November 2, 2018. Hello, my friend.
In mid-August, in front of an audience of his own employees, Marc Merrill, a co-founder of Riot Games, the studio behind League of Legends, admitted fault. According to two sources watching, he apologized, his voice choked up, and he began to cry. Twelve years after Riot’s founding, it had become clear to its employees, League…
When a theme park shutters its gates for good, it’s usually marked with a small sigh from the local news or, if the park was big enough, a what-went-wrong exposé from the national press. Decades later, they’re rusted-over playgrounds for teens who want to spook their dates. One YouTuber, who runs the channel Defunctland, is…
In the wake of public allegations that Riot Games has fostered a sexist workplace culture, two longtime employees exited the company yesterday under hazy circumstances. Systems designer Daniel Klein and communications associate Mattias Lehman—both outspoken advocates for gender diversity at Riot—are no longer working at the company following a contentious weekend involving a controversial PAX…
Blizzard has confirmed eight new Overwatch teams for the Overwatch League’s second season. The teams will represent Vancouver, Toronto, Paris, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and three Chinese cities: Hangzhou, Chengdu and Guangzhou. An official start date for the second season has not been announced. These eight new teams will join OWL’s twelve preexisting teams, making a…
When the mood strikes to watch a feel-good show about the glamour and charm of teenaged girl friendship, absolutely do not watch Asobi Asobase. Stay far away from it. If you want a good laugh at the expense of some gruesome brats, it’s entirely ideal. If you want to see three teen girls revealing themselves to…
Days after Fortnite publisher Epic Games started rewarding players for enabling two-factor authentication, Ubisoft began doing the same with tactical shooter Rainbow Six Siege. Ubisoft account-holders can snag a Siege skin after adding that extra layer of security with the game’s big update, Operation Grim Sky.
On Saturday, three Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons artists traveling from Europe to publisher Wizards of the Coast’s headquarters in Renton, Washington were denied entry to the country by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and held overnight in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. “We are tired, scared and overwhelmed,” said artist Titus…
Today, 22 days after Kotaku published an article detailing the culture of sexism at League of Legends development studio Riot Games, Riot posted a blog apologizing that Riot “hasn’t always been—or wasn’t—the place we promised you” and promising to make big, impactful cultural changes. The company says it will expand its diversity and inclusion initiative,…
Anime director Masaaki Yuasa’s recent movie Night Is Short, Walk On Girl, in U.S. theaters August 21, has all the adventure of a night high or drunk in a foreign city with none of the depravity. The romantic comedy follows a pack of teens out on the town, and swaps between the perspectives of two…
In the wake of our story about Riot Games’ sexist culture, women who work at the gaming company are contributing to a wall of post-its expressing support for each other
We live in exciting times, Super Smash Bros. fans. In this year 2018, in which many improbable things have happened, Nintendo has announced we’re getting precisely what we’ve wanted in the upcoming Smash game: every Smash fighter ever, plus Ridley from Metroid; King K. Rool from Donkey Kong; even Daisy from Mario. Great stuff, Nintendo.…
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