After eight years and some change, I am leaving Kotaku. Friday will be my last day working for this website. I will miss you all. Truth is, I’ve decided to leave the media and pursue my life’s calling: becoming a full-time saxophone player. Kidding. I’m staying in journalism, where I will continue to report on…
Last fall, nearly a year after the release of Red Dead Redemption 2, top Rockstar executive Jennifer Kolbe sent out an email to staff with a list of bullet-pointed initiatives to improve Rockstar’s culture. Rockstar, the game developer behind Grand Theft Auto and many other highly selling, often controversial games, had been widely criticized a…
Normally, we at Kotaku don’t publish articles about people getting new jobs, but sometimes a headline just has to be written, you know? Congratulations to Kelsey and to the entire extended Outer Wilds-Outer Worlds family.
Now that Final Fantasy VII Remake is out—and given that many of you have been playing it for days thanks to coronavirus-triggered early releases—it’s time we talk about how it ends. Here is your warning: even if you have played the original Final Fantasy VII, you should not read further until you’ve finished Final Fantasy…
Final Fantasy VII Remake is not a difficult game, but there are still things you should know before you play it—ways to be more efficient, to get more treasures, and to avoid those pesky game overs. Here are some basic tips for Cloud’s adventures through Midgar 2.0: Regular attacks don’t do much The first thing…
A remake is, by nature, an egotistical exercise. Choosing to revise and re-release an old work of art is looking back at it and saying, “You know what? I could do this better.” Sometimes that turns out to be true. Sometimes it turns out to be horribly false. And sometimes, a release comes out that…
This morning, the publisher Square Enix put out a new trailer for its upcoming video game Final Fantasy VII Remake. We here at Kotaku would like to offer some friendly words of advice: Don’t watch it. See, this new trailer for the game (which launches on April 10 for PS4—although many stores in Europe and…
The much-anticipated post-apocalyptic adventure game The Last of Us II will be delayed indefinitely due to the coronavirus pandemic, publisher Sony said today. The game, which had been previously scheduled for May 29, is nearly done and ready to go, a Naughty Dog developer told Kotaku this afternoon. This was a decision made for logistical…
The video game Borderlands 3 was a big sales success when it launched last fall, according to its publisher, 2K, which described it as “a billion-dollar global brand.” That’s why it was shocking to employees at Gearbox, the developer of the game, when the studio’s CEO, Randy Pitchford, told them yesterday that they would not…
Two weeks ago, I jumped into an early copy of Persona 5 Royal, expecting to maybe play a few hours to check out some of the new stuff. Now I’ve finished the game’s second dungeon and have begun to accept a new reality: I am, somehow, going to replay all of Persona 5 This piece…
GameStop will close all of its stores to customers tomorrow, switching to a “delivery at the door” service for locations that remain open, company CEO George Sherman said in a letter to employees today that was obtained by Kotaku Shoppers will be able to order games online, by using the GameStop app, or with QR…
GameStop is shutting down its stores in California, Kotaku has learned. This news comes one day after the struggling retailer told all of its U.S. employees to ignore state lockdown measures in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic, insisting that it was an “essential retail” business. “We are closing our stores in California,” the company…
The struggling video game retail chain GameStop told all of its stores this afternoon to stay open even in the event of state or city lockdowns to protect against the covid-19 pandemic, emphasizing that it is “essential retail” alongside groceries and pharmacies and should therefore be exempt from enforced closures. “Due to the products we…
In a world where video game publishers frequently mistreat their workers, where companies often seem more concerned with profits than people, here is a refreshing note from one top executive about the covid-19 pandemic that has upended all of our lives. Ubisoft chief executive officer Yves Guillemot recently sent this message, obtained by Kotaku, to…
Some developers at Naughty Dog continue to ask themselves a question that has haunted the studio for years: Is it worth it?
The biggest trade show in video games is skipping a year. E3 2020, which was planned to take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center this June, is cancelled as a result of the Covid-19 coronavirus that is currently spreading across the globe, the organizers of the conference said today. “After careful consultation with our…
If you’ve played Final Fantasy VII, you’re probably familiar with the Air Buster, a floating robot who resembles a vacuum cleaner. Air Buster, the game’s second boss, takes roughly two minutes to kill. He’s more of a tutorial on enemy weak points than a genuine threat (hint: use the Bolt spell). So it’s more than…
“This is a DC 5,” said Swen Vincke, the charismatic CEO of Larian Studios, during a recent press event for his company’s newest game, Baldur’s Gate 3. In Dungeons & Dragons parlance, “DC” stands for difficulty class, and it represents some sort of obstacle, like climbing a mountain or deceiving a stranger. You roll a…
Last spring, Electronic Arts canceled a planned spinoff of its popular Star Wars: Battlefront series—the third Star Wars game that the publisher has axed since 2017. This latest game, code-named Viking, was originally envisioned for release in fall 2020 alongside the next generation of consoles. But once it became clear to EA’s executives that the…
These days, most video game fans are sympathetic to delays. They recognize that more time makes for better games, and that game development is too complicated for anyone to accurately predict release dates very far in advance. So after a string of high-profile delays this week, including the role-playing game Cyberpunk 2077 and an action…
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