Cecilia D'Anastasio

King K. Rool Will Be In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

After years upon years of begging, Smash fans will finally see Donkey Kong Country’s King K. Rool in Smash Ultimate, released December 7. The king of the kremlings will be large and in charge in Smash Ultimate. In every fan poll of most-wanted Smash fighters, he’s been one of the most requested for years. We…

Smash Ultimate is getting two new“echo fighters”—or fighters with movesets that echo already-existent fighters: Chrom from Fire Emblem Awakening and Dark Samus from Metroid Prime 2 and 3

Popular Overwatch Pro Leaves The League To Return To His Twitch Empire [Correction]

Today, beloved Overwatch League star Brandon “Seagull” Larned announced his retirement from professional Overwatch after just one season. Larned, who played off-tank and DPS for the Dallas Fuel, will return to streaming on Twitch, where he built a streaming empire of 760,000 followers. In a statement, Mike Rufail, the owner and CEO of Envy Gaming,…

Inside The Culture Of Sexism At Riot Games

Throughout her three years at Riot Games, the company behind League of Legends, Lacy made it her mission to hire a woman into a leadership role. Lacy had heard plenty of excuses for why her female job candidates weren’t Riot material. Some were “ladder climbers.” Others had “too much ego.” Most weren’t “gamer enough.” A…

London Spitfire Wins The First Overwatch League Finals, $1,000,000

The first-ever winner of the Overwatch League season playoffs is the London Spitfire. After a rocky season spent wobbling between commanding victories and unexpected defeats, the Spitfire earned a $1,000,000 prize, as well as a silver gauntlet in the style of publisher Blizzard’s sword-and-sorcery roots. Their underdog opponents, the crowd-favorite Philadelphia Fusion, retreated with the…

Big changes are coming to Overwatch’s little hammer man. In an interview withVG247, Overwatch’s lead designer detailed how he’s making Torbjorn more useful on attack maps. Soon, he might be able to throw his turrets, which would self-upgrade. Also, his ultimate ability, Molten Core, may become a normal ability.

Last Night’s Upset Shows Cracks In The Overwatch League’s Best Team

Last night, something went terribly wrong with Overwatch’s best team. It became apparent early on in a match, when Do-hyeon “Pine” Kim, New York Excelsior’s unstoppable, sawed-off shotgun, switched off the sniper hero who made him famous and onto Doomfist, a character notorious for being high-risk but high-reward. This time, there was no reward. The…

We Tried To Uncover The Long-Lost ‘American Sailor Moon‘ And Found Something Incredible

In 1993, before the magical girl anime Sailor Moon was released in the U.S., there was an alternate vision for it. It was an American vision. A total remake of the show with Saturday morning-style animation, intercut with footage of real-life, all-American high school teens. “Politically correct,” in the words of its creators, the proposed…

Criminals Are Using Clash Of Clans To Launder Money, New Report Claims

Online criminals are reportedly laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars using blockbuster mobile games like Clash of Clans, Clash Royale and Marvel Contest of Champions, according to a new report by German cybersecurity firm Kromtech. Free-to-play games often rely on in-app purchases that allow players to exchange real money for gold, gems, or some other…

What ‘Women Only’ Overwatch Groups Are Actually Like

As someone who is both a journalist and gamer, I enjoy tossing myself into the hell pits of online shit cans and sorting through the garbage for meaning. Over the last week, that pit has consisted of “egirls only,” “hot egirls only 18+,” “only hot girls 420,” “[Name redacted’s] feminist island 2/2/2 girls only,” and…

Overwatch’s ridiculous new hamster hero—whom Kotaku will hereafterrefer to as “Hammond,” not “Wrecking Ball”—will go live on July 24, Blizzard announced today.

Fortnite Gets Golf Carts, Portals And A Desert With Season 5

Released this morning, Fortnite’s Season 5 is like a whole new game. With two new locations, toys, an All Terrain Kart and some spooky, weird space-time rifts, today’s Fortnite is in an entirely different universe. Leading up to the patch, publisher Epic Games made some mysterious and intriguing changes to the game to tease the…

Meet The Controller Mechanic Who Repairs Smash Pros’ Hardware On The Fly

In a poorly-lit corner of a former Polish wedding venue in Brooklyn, New York, Giovanni “ShinG” Nieves took a screwdriver to a GameCube controller as a crowd of customers waited. Nieves, in a red bomber jacket and a fade haircut, was reverse-engineering a Super Smash Bros. 4 competitor’s controller at a tournament called Smash Sounds.…

This Twitch Streamer Gets Revenge On Tech Support Scammers

“How should I get you the money, like, write a check?” said the Twitch streamer Kitboga, affecting the frail vocal fry of an 81-year-old woman named Edna. On the other end of the phone line, a man with a South Asian accent told “Edna” that she would have to pay $200 for the man to…

Overwatch’s Pink Mercy skin sales raiseda heckin’ ginormous sum of $12.7 million for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

It’s Now Even Easier For Overwatch Players To Throw Games

“We deranking u cool?” asked the creator of “LOSING GAMES/TROLL/DERANK,” a group queued up for a game of Overwatch. I agreed. “I’ve never done this before,” I said over comms. “How does it work?” My new teammates explained that we would draw out the game for as long as possible, frustrating our opponents by whatever…

The Truth About ‘Video Game Addiction’

When one of World of Warcraft’s top ten guilds recruited Cam as their chief hunter, his suicidal thoughts surged. To earn the enviable invitation, Cam had spent 16 hours a day grinding on WoW, to the detriment of everything else. He told his father he’d scored a job at a local restaurant, but every day…

Everyone’s favorite cartoon about aresentful red panda squirming under the suffocating grip of corporate life will return for a second season. Yes, that’s Aggretsuko, the Netflix sensation that has pencil-pushing women everywhere screaming, “Literally me!”. Season 2 will be released sometime in 2019.

After nearly a week in downtime, Fortnite’s much-anticipated Playground mode is back online. It’s a Minecraft-like environment for Fortnite players to practice their building and shooting skills. Here’s how it works

Fortnite Player Snags Kill Record By Wrecking Crowd Of Rocket-Watchers

In Fortnite, the best player doesn’t always win out. Sometimes, the worst does. A new Fortnite kill record was set this weekend by an arguably unscrupulous player who griefed 48 unsuspecting victims watching Fortnite’s one-time-only rocket launch event On Saturday, players logged into Fortnite en masse to witness a rocket speed into the atmosphere and…