Cecilia D'Anastasio

Overwatch is getting a “workshop” mode, which will certainly make the custom mode’s sexy role-play community happy. On the PTR, players can make text and rule scripts and add custom play conditions for game modes, like changing heroes’ movement or abilities. Cutely, Blizzard suggests trying out “floor is lava.”

Finding The Metagame In Atlantic City

While visiting Atlantic City’s greige boardwalk last Sunday, I set foot in my very first casino, a come-as-you-are joint called Bally’s with years’ worth of cigarette smoke ground into its red carpet. It was Easter—not a great day to commune with sin—but a day off nonetheless. Passing the ringing slot machines, I sat down at…

Report: Fortnite Developers Describe Severe Ongoing Crunch

Crunch is a widespread disease in the gaming industry, sometimes forcing developers to pull 16-hour workdays or six-day work weeks to finish a game on an over-ambitious timeline. Today, a new report from Polygon detailed how the developers of Fortnite, a game that technically is never finished, can suffer through crunch to keep the blockbuster…

Spectator Throws Dead Crab At Super Smash Bros. Tournament Winner

“Sorry for losing my temper,” top Super Smash Bros. Melee pro Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma wrote on Twitter after the weekend’s Pound 2019 tournament in Maryland. He had just fought his way out of the loser’s bracket and ultimately took it all in the grand finals. Debiedma had every reason to be happy—except in the crustacean…

Take your hearts as Ethan and I are stream Persona 5‘s Joker, the latest Super Smash Bros. Ultimate fighter, on Twitch. Or, uh, just join us in chat.

Smash Ultimate‘s Joker Is A True-To-Form Tightrope Act

The highly anticipated Joker from Persona 5 has finally been added to the roster of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, a platform fighter that’s rapidly reaching Wrestlemania levels of “everybody is here—even, somehow, that guy.” Thankfully, with Joker, Smash Ultimate continues to hit it out of the park with newly designed fighters who continue to be…

On March 4, 2022, Warner Bros. and Mojang will be releasing a Minecraft movie. It’s about a teenage girl and “her unlikely group of adventurers. “After the malevolent Ender Dragon sets out on a path of destruction, they must save their beautiful, blocky Overworld.” It’s directed by Peter Sollett (Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist).

Sony Reveals First PlayStation 5 Details

Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 5 looks like it might be a mother of a console, a report from Wired indicated this morning. Featuring a solid state drive and—yes!—backwards compatibility with the PlayStation 4, the PlayStation 5 seems big and bad, although it won’t arrive this year (maybe in 2020, as Kotaku previously reported). As is expected,…

Pepsi Considered Defending Gamers With A Billboard In Space

Imagine looking into the calm night sky and, in the foreground of a galaxy of shimmering stars, seeing a confrontational space advertisement demanding justice for gamers. Last weekend, the website Futurism reported that PepsiCo recently considered launching an “orbital billboard” in space to promote its campaign “against stereotypes and unjustified prejudices against gamers.” The Russian…

Twitch Punishes White Apex Legends Cosplayer Who Painted Her Face Black

Twitch has temporarily banned a Lithuanian streamer after she cosplayed the Apex Legends character Lifeline using blackface makeup. On Saturday, Karina “Karupups” Martsinkevich was streaming herself preparing her Lifeline cosplay in Twitch’s “Just Chatting” section to roughly 160 viewers. Martsinkevich, who had dyed her hair and put on a white shirt and surgical mask, then…

Cyber-Attackers Are Making Phony Epic Games Accounts With Other People’s Emails

For months, an unspecified number of users trying to register an account with Epic Games have found that their e-mail addresses were somehow already linked to accounts. Today, Epic Games told Kotaku that the culprit is an ongoing cyber attack and that the company is working to delete those accounts, though they would not say…

The Best Part Of Yoshi’s Crafted World Is The Scenery

Games traditionally propel us forward with any one of these methods: increasingly tough bosses, collectable outfits, competitive skill points, unlocking new abilities, and, of course, story beats. Yoshi’s Crafted World is not like those games. For me, the paper carrot at the end of its fuzzy pipecleaner stick is discovering what charming and surprising thing…

Accusations Of Sexual Predation Shake Pokémon YouTube Community

Accusations of sexual predation are rocking the Pokémon YouTube community after 12 alleged victims made public statements against four individuals in that scene, including Kyle “TheKingNappy” McNeal, a well-known Pokémon YouTuber with over 500,000 subscribers. Pokémon is a franchise that typically appeals to kids and teenagers, plus adults who grew up with the games and…

After shutting down /r/Games yesterday to draw attention to bigotry in the gaming community, the subreddit’s moderators explained their controversial decision last night in a second post. We have updated our story

Video Game News Subreddit Closes For 24 Hours To Protest Bigotry [Updated]

Last night, /r/Games, a subreddit with 1.7 million subscribers, announced it would be closing on April Fool’s Day to shed light on the bigotry in the online gaming community. “Not April Fool’s,” the post begins. It continues: “This April Fool’s, we decided to take things a little more seriously and shed some light on a…

Pro Removed From $1 Million Magic Tournament Accused Of Harassing Women

On Wednesday, one of the most prominent players in the Magic: The Gathering scene was unceremoniously dropped from this weekend’s first-ever $1 million tournament for the strategy card game. Since then, as questions have been raised about the unspecified reasons behind Turtenwald’s removal, sources have told Kotaku that the player has engaged in inappropriate behavior…

A Filmmaker Thinks He Can Turn Clicker Universal Paperclips Into A Movie

Clicker-ish game Universal Paperclips may be getting a feature-length film treatment, the New Yorker first reported yesterday. Intrigued and a little confused, Kotaku spoke with the filmmaker over e-mail this morning to get more details. When the average person thinks of a video game movie, they might recall Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Resident Evil,…

The Underground, Activist Gaming Scene In Communist Czechoslovakia

In the ’80s in Czechoslovakia, a Soviet-dominated state under a communist regime, a small contingent of gamers were cannibalizing ping pong balls, drawer handles and calculator keys to use as track balls, joysticks and buttons. At that time, video games were “the least censored media in the country,” according to Jaroslav Švelch, author of Gaming…

It must be springtime because Overcooked 2 just announced its new DLC: Campfire Cook Off. Players are headed to the woods with a new map, twelve levels and some new campfire-themed recipes.

Crunchyroll Responds To Concerns About Rising Prices

Today, subscribers to the largest anime streaming service, Crunchyroll, were hit with a 15 percent price hike monthly—spurring complaints from longtime users. Paying Crunchyroll subscribers received an email midday alerting them to the price change, which will come into effect for new users May 1, 2019, and for existing users, Aug. 1, 2019. Prices will…