Mega-publisher EA has purchased a new studio—Respawn, the developer of Titanfall. The news comes just weeks after the publisher shuttered Visceral Games. EA said in a press release that the deal is worth $455 million, a number that includes cash, equity, and performance milestone payments. Respawn staff have spent the past few weeks exchanging whispers…
One of the most bizarre quirks in the detective game L.A. Noire was that choosing the “doubt” option—out of “truth/doubt/lie”—would transform protagonist Cole Phelps into a raging psychopath. For the remastered version, publisher Rockstar has changed those options entirely. As evidenced in a new trailer for the Switch version of L.A. Noire, which comes out…
What do you call it when a video game is full of items or services that you can buy with real money? Is it “games as a service”? “Recurrent consumer spending opportunities”? Or maybe PRI (Player Recurring Investment)? Yesterday, publishers Ubisoft and Take-Two held quarterly financial earnings calls, which gives us a good opportunity to…
Telltale Games is laying off 90 people, or about 25% of its staff, the company said today. “The decision is designed to make the company, a leader in player-driven narrative games, more competitive as a developer and publisher of groundbreaking story-driven gaming experiences with an emphasis on high quality in the years ahead,” Telltale said…
We’re just over three weeks away from Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and to celebrate, Nintendo today offered a bunch of new details for the upcoming Switch role-playing game, including a spotlight of the combat system and the reveal of a season pass. In a Nintendo Direct this morning, the publisher showed off a new trailer and…
Last week, publisher Perfect World shut down Runic Games, the Seattle-based developer of Torchlight and Hob. To commemorate, we asked one of the studio’s co-founders to share some thoughts and anecdotes. Runic was founded in 2008 by Travis Baldree, Diablo co-creators Max Schaefer and Erich Schaefer, Peter Hu, and members of the defunct Flagship Studios,…
Just what makes Super Mario Odyssey so delightful to play? Today on Kotaku Splitscreen, let’s discuss. Also on this week’s show: news (39:37) on Sony’s week full of PS4 announcements, the full story behind Visceral Games shutting down, and a slick new GameStop program that might piss off some publishers. Finally, we talk Destiny 2…
Move over, Nostalrius—Blizzard is making its own classic servers for World of Warcraft, called World of Warcraft Classic “We’re committed to making an authentic, Blizzard-quality classic experience,” Blizzard said today during its Blizzcon keynote, promising that these new classic servers will take some time before they’re ready. So, uh, be patient. Fans had been asking…
StarCraft II is going free-to-play, Blizzard announced today during the BlizzCon 2017 keynote. On November 14, you’ll be able to download the Wings of Liberty campaign without paying a cent, getting access to both single- and multiplayer for free. If you already have Wings, you’ll get a free copy of the game’s first expansion, Heart…
China-based publisher Perfect World this week laid off most of Motiga, the developer of the hero shooter Gigantic, and shut down Runic Games, the studio behind the popular action-RPG Torchlight and the recently released puzzle-platformer Hob. Both game developers were based in Seattle. In a statement, Perfect World said that it will continue to sell…
Bungie says it has fixed Destiny 2‘s infamous “Bureaucratic Walk” emote, which was allowing players to glitch through walls to access parts of the game that they shouldn’t have been able to access. A hotfix released today patched that bug and made some tweaks to Faction Rallies and Crucible scores,among other things
A barrage of fake user reviews has hit the Metacritic page for Assassin’s Creed Origins, all of them positive, and all of them gibberish. “Ways better than assassins creed unity and assassins creed syndicate,” reads a review that appears roughly a dozen times, each from a different username. “it is more mature and bayek is…
In early September, the developers of South Park: The Fractured But Whole made some waves when they showed the character customization options, which suggest that playing as a black character will make your game harder. Then Ubisoft took it back. The truth, however, is a bit hazier. As soon as you load up the new…
This week’s Nintendo financial briefings revealed one undeniable fact: the company is having a killer 2017. Between Mario, Zelda, and the red-hot Switch, Nintendo hasn’t had a year this good in a very long time. A few stats: Nintendo sold over two million copies of Super Mario Odyssey in just three days, which is remarkable.…
Just like they did at E3, the folks at Sony showed off some new footage today from some of their PlayStation 4 games planned for 2018 and beyond, including God of War, Spider-Man, and Detroit. Here are some of the more interesting trailers Sony showed during its conference at Paris Games Week today. First up…
Destiny 2’s first expansion, Curse of Osiris, will be out December 5, Activision said today at the Sony press conference. It’ll be set on Mercury, but of course, you already knew that
Final Fantasy XV’s ‘Episode Ignis’ downloadable content, which will explain what happened during Ignis’s disappearance in Chapter 9, will be out on December 13. You can check out the new trailer here.
Today at 11am ET, Sony is holding a press conference from Paris Games Week that the folks behind PlayStation say will include “seven all-new game announcements for PS4 and PS VR.” Sony will also be showing new stuff from the company’s slate of games for 2018 and beyond. UPDATE (12:45pm): And it’s over. From Sucker…
On this week’s episode of Kotaku Splitscreen, recorded between marathon writing sessions for both me and Kirk, we’re talking about the new Assassin’s Creed and NeoGAF’s implosion. First we dig into the good and bad of Assassin’s Creed Origins, which Kirk has been playing for five days straight and has many thoughts about. Then (32:06)…
It seemed like a surefire hit: a Star Wars take on Uncharted, published by Electronic Arts and developed by the longrunning studio Visceral Games. But nothing is sure in the video game industry, and on October 17, 2017, when employees of Visceral were told that the company would be closing, some who had worked for…
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