Ethan Gach

The Weekend In Esports: ESL One Cologne, Dota 2, And ARMS

Evo 2017 hasn’t even started, DreamHack Atlanta is weeks away, and Dota 2‘s TI7 is next month, and yet this post-4th of July weekend is still packed. North America’s Cloud9 have done the unthinkable and won a spot in the ESL One Cologne grand finals, a premier, $250,000 Counter-Strike tournament that’s usually dominated by European…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Christie On Vacation

Over the holiday weekend, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was caught sun bathing on a beach that was closed due to a government shutdown. What other forbidden shores has the Republican politician visited I wonder? The state’s government shutdown comes as the legislature and governor’s office struggle to find a compromise on the budget. But…

Zynga Co-Founder Wants To Make American Politics More Like FarmVille 

Do you remember Mark Pincus? He co-founded Zynga and led the burgeoning online games company as CEO until 2013 when he was replaced by then czar of Xbox entertainment, Don Mattrick. After returning to the company for a short stint in 2015, Pincus now has a new pet project: making the Democratic Party more like…

Watch The Third Day Of The 2017 Summer Games Done Quick Speedrun Marathon

Summer Games Done Quick is on its final day and its going out with a bang. Along with Awesome Games Done Quick at the start of the year, SGDQ has grown bigger every year and proved an awesome way to kick-off the summer. Setup at the at the Marriott City Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, speedrunners…

Final Fantasy IX Had Some Spectacular Backgrounds 

Series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi recently reiterated which Final Fantasy was his favorite. Hint: it was the last one he happened to work directly on. While Final Fantasy IX isn’t at the top of my list, you can’t deny it had some really beautiful backgrounds. With Sakaguchi playing favorites again, illustrator Kevin Hong took it as…

Project To Curate A Thousand Small Indie Games Is Finally Complete

“One Thousand Voices” is Steve Cook’s freeware curation project. It’s a Twitter thread of hundreds of experimental games by unique individuals that tries to highlight all of the amazing work being done in the game’s space that doesn’t get the attention it deserves, and over the weekend he tweeted out the 1000th and final game.…

Track: America The Beautiful | Artist: Ray Charles | Album: The Sandlot (1993) Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Blizzard Teases New Lore Surrounding Overwatch‘s Enigmatic Doomfist 

An update on Blizzard’s Overwatch blog adds more more details about Doomfist, long suspected to be the game’s next hero. Pointing to an “incident at Helix Security International’s classified maximum security installation,” the post states, “it can now be confirmed that what occurred was an attack by the Talon organization with the express purpose of…

Devs Conspire With Twitch Viewers To Troll Clustertruck Speedrun

097Aceofspades currently holds the world record for beating Clustertruck, a game where you hopscotch across a death course of rampaging semis and pileups, so naturally during his attempt at Summer Games Done Quick the game’s devs collaborated with the Twitch chat to fuck with him. Clustertruck is notorious for a backdoor that allows its developer,…

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is getting a new desert map. The developer tweeted as much yesterday, revealing two screenshots of the new battle royale locale. It looks beautiful and was probably inevitable.

Rebellion Is Working On A Sequel To Evil Genius

The cult-PC classic came out in 2006, and in a video interview released today, Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley announced that Evil Genius 2 is currently in the works.  Kingsley says that development only began last spring but wanted to stress the upcoming game is not simply a remaster of the original. “Evil Genius 2 will…

Valve Announces Big Changes To Dota 2‘s Tournament Structure Going Forward

The biggest Dota 2 event of the year is next month, but that hasn’t stopped Valve from announcing a major overhaul of the esport’s competitive scene to take place after the $20+ million tournament is concluded in August. “For the next year we will be taking a more organic approach to growing the competitive ecosystem,…

Here’s A Closer Look At That Nuclear Bunker Filled With Mario Murals

Foxtrot-01 is one of several Minuteman Missile Launch Sites, a series of facilities dedicated to launching inter-continental nukes in the event that the U.S. comes under attack. It’s also filled with Mario murals. The bunker’s fascination with Mario first surfaced (as far as I can tell) back in 2014 after it was pointed out in…

FLCL is getting two new seasons to air on Toonami in 2018. It will be twelve episodes total, split across FLCL 2 and FLCL 3 with the news and teaser coming out of this year’s Anime Expo. If you like puberty, aliens, and giant robots, the original series is streaming at on various platforms.

A Prototype Build Of The Never Completed SNES Rayman Game Is Now On The Internet 

Once upon a time there was going to be a Rayman game for the SNES. Series creator Michel Ancel was one of two people working on it, but the project never came to fruition. A prototype build of the game that surfaced last fall, however, has finally made it onto the Internet thanks to game…

Five Nights At Freddy’s Fans Are Convinced Its Creator Is Trolling Them Again

Scott Cawthon is the creator of Five Nights at Freddy’s a series of horror games with a big cult following behind them. His latest game was expected to be the sixth main entry in the series, but now Cawthon says he’s canceled the project and turning to work on other things. Nobody believes him, of…

Valve Tinkers With Dota 2 Ahead Of TI7 In Latest Patch

Last night, Valve pushed out a small update for Dota 2. Patch 7.06etweaks a slew of heroes ahead of the game’s biggest tournament of the year in August, including Alchemist, whose base agility jumped nearly 50%. Here’s the full list of changes: Neutral small camps: gold bounty increased by 10% Veil of Discord: Recipe cost…

That Is One Fancy Zelda-Themed Switch 

The people over at MakoMod have put together a Switch that looks like it came straight out of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It’s pretty meta. In the game, Link uses the Sheikah Slate to take pictures, look at maps, and figure out where he needs to go. It was pretty clearly…

There will be a Nintendo Direct July 6 at 10am Eastern focusing on Splatoon 2 ahead of the game’s July 21 release. Nintendo says the stream will show off features new to the game.

Popular GTA V Modding Tool OpenIV Is Once Again Being Distributed [UPDATE]

OpenIV, the popular modding tool for games like Grand Theft Auto V, appears to be getting back to business as usual weeks after it was shutdown due to a cease and desist letter issued by Take-Two, GTA’s publisher. Over the weekend, a download button for the software returned to OpenIV’s website. First removed on June…