Cecilia D'Anastasio

YouTubers Agitated Over Crowdsourced Content Moderation [UPDATE]

YouTube’s latest initiative, “YouTube Heroes,” is gamifying viewer participation in content moderation, angering several content creators who believe incentivizing crowdsourced moderation isn’t a great approach. Announced Tuesday, “YouTube Heroes” will allow enrolled YouTubers over 18 (or over 13 with a guardian’s consent) to receive points for sharing knowledge on videos, captioning videos or moderating content.…

Smash Bros. Player’s Sexual Consent Guide Ignites Debate In Community

The Super Smash Bros. community is having a conversation about sexual assault, whether they want to or not. Last week, that discussion came to a head when a female competitive Smash player published a guide attempting to educate the community around the famous Nintendo fighting game about consent. Now, the Smash community is debating whether…

Dreaming of a game where you could play soccer, with cars, under the ocean? Rocket League just announced its upcoming Aquadome arena, slated for release in October. Check the trailer below:

Animator Quack Attack published a Berserk parody animation that, many views later, is still making me giggle like an idiot. “Welcome to Berserk” has protagonist Guts stoically standing still as horrible things happen around him, infinitely, forever. Take a look:

Mob Psycho 100 Finally Gets Its Own Dank Meme

Mob Psycho 100 is definitively the shit. It’s true. One tablespoon psychic kid, a quarter cup charlatan exorcist, strained, pressurized and mixed by One-Punch Man creator ONE is the recipe for an irresistible manga. But when baked by Studio BONES, it’s essential sustenance for your anime diet. It’s also the perfect set of ingredients for…

Body-Bending Video Game Perfect Woman Critiques Female Stereotypes

Womanhood can be a contortion act. Prospering is often a matter of stretching, compressing and jaggedly code-switching like artists’ jointed wood mannequins—the kind girls buy in middle school when a Cosmopolitan quiz augurs the life of a painter. Perfect Woman, a Kinect game released last Wednesday, is about those contortions and uses physical posturing to…

Pokémon Go Streamer Mugged Live On Twitch [UPDATE]

Last night, a mugger allegedly assaulted and robbed blogger Rickey Yaneza while he was streaming Pokémon Go in Central Park. Consequently, live footage of the attack streamed on his Twitch channel, which is currently suspended. At 12:30 a.m., Yaneza, 43, was allegedly attacked while running to catch a Snorlax that spawned in Grand Army Plaza,…

Season 1 of Berserk’s 2016 adaptation concludes today with the announcement that Season 2 is coming in Spring, 2017, Crunchyroll reports.

In upcoming anime movie A Silent Voice, a deaf girl and the boy who bullied her meet again after many years. Premiering in Japanese theaters tomorrow, A Silent Voice looks like a beautiful story of isolation, empathy and redemption. Subtitles for the deaf will accompany the film in select Japanese theaters. Check out the latest…

The Heroic Lengths You Have To Walk To Evolve Buddy Pokémon

The buddy system is Pokémon Go’s latest cloying grab at my ‘90s kid nostalgia. Think about it: you, your favorite Pokémon, together, walking into the sunset; growing as one and traversing the unknown. It’s just like Ash’s journey in the Pokémon TV show, except if you’re attempting it with the IRL buddy system, you might…

Did You Know That FFXIV Has A Jail For Very Bad Players?

Have you been bad? Very bad? Maybe you need a time-out. In Final Fantasy XIV, if you have been very bad, your time-out will come complete with a chastising parent figure and a very literal jail. On the MMORPG, players who spam, boast dirty usernames or otherwise violate the game’s user agreement are sent to…

Meet The Anonymous Watchdog Who Broke The CS:GO Betting Scandal

One of 2016’s most explosive pieces of gaming journalism was broken by a news-obsessed Indian IT guy with a relatively unknown YouTube channel. HonorTheCall, an anonymous internet presence, is a full-time software developer whose YouTube image, up until June, was built on small-fry Call of Duty news. Over Call of Duty footage, HonorTheCall pronounced updates…

What You Need To Know About Pokémon Go’s New Buddy System

Pokémon Go’s anticipated new buddy system rolled out over the last few days. Yesterday, everybody received access to patch 1.7 for iOS and 0.37 for Android. Now, when you walk around and collect Pokémon, you can choose a “buddy” Pokémon that acquires candy of its Pokémon type after you hit certain distance benchmarks. Here’s how…

YouTuber Arrested For Allegedly Intending To Have Sexual Relations With Minor

Federal investigators arrested popular YouTuber Starlit “JinBop” Zhao last month for allegedly engaging in sexually predatory behavior toward a 15-year-old female fan of his channel. The news of Zhao’s arrest first spread over the weekend through a YouTube news channel, and he remains in custody today. Zhao’s YouTube channel, popular among young teens, features him…

Dungeons & Dragons’ ranger class received a buff yesterday. For over a year, players have expressed dissatisfaction with rangers’ high-level play, inspiring publisher Wizards of the Coast to revise the class’s features. “Favored enemy” and terrain navigation are now more effective. Here are all of the changes, which WoTC stresses are “draft” changes and not…

Alongside Pokemon Go’s new “Buddy System” update comes a nostalgia-piquing Easter egg: After walking 10 kilometers with Pikachu, he’ll post up on your shoulder as you hunt Pokemon, according to The Silph Road. Under the “Buddy System,” walking with your chosen “buddy” Pokemon will earn them candy.

Sora from Kingdom Hearts Modded Into Smash Bros. 4

Kingdom Hearts’ Sora was one of the most requested Super Smash Bros. 4 fighters when Nintendo asked fans who they wanted included last year’s DLC. Although we saw crowd favorites Cloud and Bayonetta, Sora didn’t make it into the roster. Recently, Smash modders Nibrock.Rock and KTH sought to fix that. Using Shulk as a base,…

This weekend, Overwatch will be available for free on PS4 and (disappointingly) for only Xbox One owners with an Xbox Live Gold membership.

Meet Kotaku‘s New Staff Writer, Heather Alexandra

On the 22nd of August, Kotaku welcomed Heather Alexandra to our ranks. On Kotaku, Heather’sbeen producing thoughtful, critical videos about abstract concepts in games for a few months, but now, we’re proud to have her full-time as a staff writer. Hooray! We’ve seen Heather explore “time” as the scariest video game monster, as well as…

We’ve updated our story on FaZe Clan’s controversial and unreleased video game. 19-year-old CEO of iCazual Entertainment, co-producer of Starnet Eclipse, has responded to our requests for comment. You can read our update here