Ethan Gach

The Week In Games: Dishonorable Mention 

It’s time to return this week to Bethesda’s macabre steampunk heaven where the sun is only ever rising or setting and probably no one ever takes a shower. I can’t wait to embark on yet another stealth adventure with all of the best intentions in mind only to abandon my “perfect” play-through the minute something…

Winning The World Of Warcraft Arena World Championship Is Sweaty Business 

Professional competitive gamers are often derided as fake athletes. After all, who could possibly compare sitting in front of a computer screen mashing buttons on a keyboard and mouse to running several miles on a soccer pitch or ramming into the linesman opposite you play, after play? But intense competition of any kind is grueling…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Sombra’s Day Job

Sombra is finally here! After a months long, arduous ARG campaign from Blizzard teasing the latest Overwatch character’s reveal, the punk hacker will be available to play this week. She was greeted with a mixture of joy and sorrow, laughter and crying, and jokes…and more jokes So what took so long? What was Ms. Purple…

Rick Fox’s Esport Teams Can’t Stop Losing

It’s been almost a year since retired NBA player Rick Fox purchased Gravity Gaming for $1 million. Choosing to rename the organization and expand it beyond its humble origins, Echo Fox was born, a burgeoning esport enterprise that seemed, in part, to signal a new era for competitive gaming. If Fox, who claimed earlier this…

South Korea’s Ballistix are the new World Champions of Heroes of the Storm after defeating Europe’s Fnatic HotS 3-1 in a best-of-five series at BlizzCon 2016. They had beat Fnatic 2-o in a series from earlier in the tournament. The win was worth $300,000 in prize money.

Sunday Comics: Make The Frontier Great Again

Welcome to Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon. Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published November 5. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published October 31. Read more of Awkward Zombie Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and…

Pavel “Pavel” Beltukov is Hearthstone’s new World Champion after defeating Artem “DrHippi” Kravets in the series 4-2. He takes home $250,000 as a result of placing first in the tournament. Pavel is only 18 years old.

Day Of The Devs Festival Is Full Of Rad Indie Games

Hosted jointly by Double Fine and iam8bit, Day of the Devs is like E3 but inverted. Instead of big press conferences blasting commercials and talking points at an audience composed of journalists and industry enthusiasts, the event is small and interactive; a place for people to gather and talk about their pet projects and creative…

Hand-painted Knights and Bikes will be published by Double Fine and has a new trailer. The game, originally Kickstarted earlier this year, tells the tale of two children exploring crazy shit on there bikes kind of like the Goonies. Its two creators previously worked on games like Tearaway and LittleBigPlanet. 

South Korea Walks All Over Russia In Overwatch World Cup Finals

So that was a bloodbath, to put it mildly. Kind of like an Overwatch tournament finals brought to you by Quentin Tarantino. Perhaps South Korea was favored going into this match-up, especially after their triumphant march up through the rest of the bracket. But no one expected Russia to lose so easily, much less roll…

Modern Warfare Remastered Sticks “Caution” Sign Over Old Glitch

Despite being the platonic ideal of a big budget, blockbuster video games, the Call of Duty series has had its fair share of glitches, and the first Modern Warfare was no exception. Many of them included ways to escape multiplayer maps entirely, falling out of the levels into strange and bizarre mirror universes bereft of…

Boss Reaper Plays Help Sweden Take Bronze At Overwatch World Cup

It looked like anyone’s game for much of the best-of-three series between Sweden and Finland in today’s opening contest for third place in the Overwatch World Cup. Tied at one game each, both teams went into the final round trading advantages back and forth until it looked like Finland was on the verge of clinching…

Blizzard Wants To Know If Google’s DeepMind AI Can Conquer StarCraft II

Although competitive StarCraft is in decline, Blizzard is still trying to breathe some new life into its decades old RTS series. During the company’s keynote presentation yesterday at BlizzCon 2016, Blizzard’s president, Michael Morhaime announced, announced new co-op missions and a new co-op commander would be added to the game on November 22. More unexpectedly,…

Blaster Master Zero will release on the Nintendo 3DS eshop in Spring 2017 according to an announcement by Inti Creates. The company acquired the license to the original game from Sunsoft and has been working on remastering and expanding it, adding new levels, enemies, etc.

The Weekend In Esports: BlizzCon 2016 And Smash Bros. Galore

BlizzCon 2016 is in full swing. So in addition to things like new Overwatch characters and the announcement of the Overwatch League, there’s also a ton of actual tournaments going on for each of Blizzard’s major competitive games. Details on when and where to catch all of the action are below. Overwatch It all comes…

This Week In The Business: “Less Poking, More Stroking”

QUOTE | “My motto is less poking, more stroking.” – Funomena CEO Robin Hunicke addressing the problem of the “power grip” configuration in VR controllers like Vive and how there needs to be a more relaxed, finesse or “precision grip.” QUOTE | “In a way, The Last of Us really got us thinking about systems.”…

The Week In Games: If These Sprites Could Talk

Owlboy is finally coming out. Like for real. This week. It’s here. The game has been in development for ten years. Originally intended to ship in 2011,development became a long and winding road of what-ifs and some-days. Life is complicated. The team wanted the game to live up to the hype. So instead of coming…

Steam Runs Out of Keys For A Game, Keeps Selling It Anyway

The Splinter Cell series for PC went on sale this weekend on Steam. Every game was discounted at 75% off, including Splinter Cell: Blacklist, the most recent game which Kirk Hamilton called in his review a sort of “greatest hits” collection borrowing the most successful parts from each previous game. There’s only one problem. Apparently…

Steins;Gate 0 will finally release in North America on November 29. The visual novel will be available next month on PS4 and Vita according to a post on the PlayStation blog by localization lead, Adam Lensenmayer. The game is a sequel to Steins;Gate. You can read our review of the imported Japanese version here

Perfect Rocky Moment Makes League Finals That Much Better

Samsung Galaxy fought great, but SK Telecom T1 was hands-down the better fighter. And after adding a third championship to their name in just four years, it’s safe to say they are the best team in League of Legends history. That outcome seemed just as inevitable before last night’s finals as after them. Of course…