Three years after anime fan Dr. Steve Brule told me in a Kotaku comment to “fuck off” after I wrote the blog “Girls Fight With Their Butts And Boobs In This Wretched New Anime,” finally, I am taking his advice. Thanks, Doc. Today is my last day at Kotaku. I never once imagined that I…
Min-Liang Tan was “officially pissed off,” he wrote in an email to members of Razer’s marketing team in February of 2014. The gaming hardware company hadn’t made the business website Fast Company’s 2014 list of “Most Innovative Companies,” and in his email, part of an exchange obtained by Kotaku, Tan asked of his marketing employees,…
Riot Games will pay out a huge $10 million proposed settlement collectively to every woman who has been employed by the company at any time over the last five years. The settlement is one of the largest in California history for a gender discrimination suit, says the plaintiff’s lawyer. The payout, which was first reported…
It’s the beginning of another episode of the Rajj Show, a livestreamed reality show with what may euphemistically be described as 13 of Twitch’s strongest personalities, and already, it’s on a waterslide straight to hell’s navel. A new guest is immediately cut off after introducing himself as a lawyer who streams at night. “Can you…
Saqib “Lirik” Zahid, who has 2.5 million followers on Twitch, is the last streamer to need a viewbot. Nevertheless, over the last couple of days, his fans and followers wondered whether he’d somehow succumbed—this week, his average 27,000 viewer count for November shot up to a huge 76,000 for no discernable reason. Zahid felt the…
“What Dungeons and Dragons class should I play?” is the kind of question you could answer with a cursory quiz, but that would be a mistake. You owe it to yourself—and to your D&D dungeon master—to think holistically about character class, maybe the most important choice you’ll make in a D&D game. Picking the right…
Rare’s upcoming game, Everwild, is a delightful and fantastical-looking adventure game set in a natural paradise. Revealed today at Inside Xbox, Everwild featured Princess Mononoke-style wilderness and creatures. The British studio was acquired by Microsoft in 2002. This is Rare’s first game since Sea of Thieves. We couldn’t discern much about the gameplay or plot…
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is not a game I can claim is good. It’s got big-money polish, cinematic orchestral music, and the quote-unquote “gunfeel” of a AAA banger, but a large portion of the series’ fanbase and I agree that it’s also rife with issues that make it irredeemably frustrating to play: camping players,…
Humans do lots of inadvisable things in public for attention (see: hot dog eating contests, “the worm”). There is, though, a fine line between inoffensively asserting your existence and setting a bad example by putting yourself at risk. This is the debate at the heart of record-setting. Right now, Twitch streamer Andrew “GiantWaffle” Bodine is…
Only a couple of weeks into the meme, we’ve already reached peak “OK boomer.” How do I know that? Someone got Naruto’s voice actor to say it at a convention this weekend, and frankly, I don’t think I ever need to hear it again. In a Reddit post, an attendee of Minneapolis convention Galaxy Con…
When YouTuber “Double A” watched Desmond “Etika” Amofah’s final YouTube video, one sentence stuck out to him: “I know this world’s gonna forget me.” “That’s just not true,” said Double A, who lives in New York City. “We all miss him. We all love him.” Amofah, a popular 29-year-old YouTuber who created videos about Nintendo…
I’m streaming Terry Bogard in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate alongside Nathan Grayson! Okay! Tune in!
Terry Bogard, who made his debut in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate today, wasn’t exactly the most-requested Smash fighter. He’s from a 30-year-old fighting game that a large swath of Smash players hadn’t played or even heard of prior to Nintendo’s September announcement. But he is fun as hell and totally weird. “Whether or not the…
Five Super Smash Bros. Ultimate pros recently shared their thoughts on which character they think is the strongest, and some of their answers are surprising. “I think the best character is clearly Joker now,” said Smash streamer and top Smash 4 player Gonzalo “Zero” Barrios, citing the domination of fellow pro and Joker player Leonardo…
“F” in a moment of internet tragedy, when a YouTuber confesses they were mercilessly dumped. In a flash of live, online embarrassment, when an Overwatch player misclicks their ult, “F.” The internet is a graveyard of “FFFFFFFF,” with some uncountable number tossed off every hour, everywhere, to pay respects. Five years ago today, the Call…
Blizzard has finally announced Overwatch 2, the next iteration of the developer’s massively popular first-person hero shooter. It’s a sequel with all-new maps, heroes and modes, including player-versus-environment modes and a new player-versus-player mode called “Push.” In the new announcement trailer, revealed today at Blizzcon, Overwatch heroes Mei, Winston and Tracer touch down in Paris,…
Before Blizzcon’s opening ceremony, Blizzard president J. Allen Brack somberly addressed the crowd with an apology for Blizzard’s harsh punishment of Hearthstone esports pro Chung “Blitzchung” Ng Wai. “Blizzard had the opportunity to bring the world together in a tough Hearthstone esports moment about a month ago and we did not,” said Brack. “We moved…
At first, I was sure my opponent was aimbotting. We were in a close game of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s team deathmatch and I was ever so slowly crawling along a wall. The slower, the more quiet, I thought. Something suddenly rustled just ahead. I peeked around the corner and was instantly downed by…
With its dying breath, it looks like startup-turned-laughing-stock WeWork is investing in esports. Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that WeWork filed a trademarkwith the United Kingdom’s Intellectual Property Office for “Play By We.” The application describes “entertainment services in the nature of online video game playing and esports,” “esports contests” and “providing facilities for video…
Magic: The Gathering is experiencing a bit of a renaissance, and you don’t have to look at publisher Hasbro’s financials to prove it. The 26-year-old strategy card game is alive, kickin’ and as accessible as ever to those curious about picking up a new hobby. Part of what’s fuelled the game’s resurgence is a shift…
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