Nathan Grayson

Breath Of The Wild Mod Makes Link’s House Suck Less

Much like his fellow millennials (who may or may not also technically be over 100 years old due to Calamity-induced death sleeps), Breath of the Wild’s Link dreams of home ownership. Unlike the rest of us, he can actually achieve that goal. There’s just one problem: The house is bad. Between the initial purchase and…

Rust, As Told By Steam Reviews

If you even casually follow the Grimace-colored streaming monolith that is Twitch, you’re well aware that the current flavor of the month is Rust, a survival game that originally came out in 2013. This means new players are discovering the genre oldtimer for the first time. While some enjoy the game’s inhospitable chaos, others are…

Donald Trump has been indefinitely suspended from Twitch. After the Capitol Building insurrection, Twitch suspended the then-president, now-professional angry baby man (who is no doubt weeks or even days from a TV deal), but with the caveat that it would “reassess his account after he leaves office.” In a statement, Twitch said that it’s turning…

Twitch’s Latest Pogchamp Emote Is A Meme Lizard, Not A Streamer

Twitch’s plan to replace its problematic Pogchamp emote with a rotating cast of fresh faces? Pretty poggers. Twitch’s execution of said plan? Not poggers. Today’s Pogchamp? Also not poggers, because instead, it’s KomodoHype, a meme with some Pogchamp history. The thing about minefields is, you don’t generally realize exactly how much you’re going to regret…

Video Game Spoilers Are Good, Actually

For the most part, the internet is a screaming void where nobody can agree on anything—not even what to scream about. But there is one unspoken rule that a remarkably large number of people hold sacred: no spoilers. Is that for the best, though, or is it limiting our ability to talk about games (and…

Twitch’s Rust Boom Is The Streamer Crossover Event Of The Century

There is no predicting which game Twitch will catapult into the spotlight next. Last year, it was Among Us, a previously obscure party game about deception. Now, it’s Rust, a survival game that first came out in 2013, whose heyday was thought to have long since passed. These seemingly random flavors of the month have…

Coheed And Cambria Frontman Writes Mournful Song About PlayStation 5 Shortages

I want a PlayStation 5. I have tried on multiple occasions to acquire a PlayStation 5. I do not have a PlayStation 5. At the rate things are going, these words will likely be the first in my autobiography and on my tombstone—and perhaps yours as well. It is only right, then, that somebody has…

Twitch’s Pogchamp Removal Was Never Enough, And Now It’s Turning Into A Disaster

It’s not every day you hear about an enormous platform like Twitch swatting the face of one of its most popular emotes clean off and rendering the president’s account indefinitely inert, as it did in the aftermath of last week’s Capitol Building insurrection. But Twitch does do similar things from time to time, on a…

Spanish Streamer TheGrefg Obliterates All-Time Twitch Viewership Record

For years now, Twitch’s record for most concurrent viewers on a single streamer’s channel has been hotly contested, with streamers topping each other in slow-building increments. Today, however, Spanish streamer TheGrefg made everybody else look like they’d been wrestling for discarded peanut shells. As of writing, he topped out at nearly 2.5 million—a new all-time…

Waluigi Will Never Be In Smash, And Other 2021 Predictions

A new year is here, and surprise! It’s already extremely bad—just like the last one. But maybe better things lie ahead. Or, you know, at the very least, we might get ambushed by some cool video games in addition to all the bad news bears that will inevitably emerge from the shadows to batter us…

Twitch Will Have A Different Pogchamp Emote Every 24 Hours From Now On

Earlier this week, Twitch removed its extremely popular Pogchamp emote, which is used to express excitement in chat, after the face of the emote, Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez, encouraged further “civil unrest” after the insurrection at the Capitol Building. Now, just two days later, it’s replaced Gutierrez’s likeness with an elaborate plan that is, honestly, pretty…

Twitch Suspends Donald Trump’s Channel To Prevent Him From Inciting ‘Further Violence’

In the wake of yesterday’s violent, conspiracy-fueled insurrection at the Capitol Building, Twitch has elected to indefinitely suspend Donald Trump’s Twitch account. In an email to Kotaku, a Twitch spokesperson explained the company’s rationale. “In light of yesterday’s shocking attack on the Capitol, we have disabled President Trump’s Twitch channel,” the spokesperson wrote. “Given the…

Nathan Grayson’s Top 10 Games Of 2020 (That Aren’t From 2020)

Wow, what’s a year it’s been. I memorized the pattern of tiny paint bubbles on the wall behind my computer monitor. I also re-watched the same three TV shows one thousand times. I’ve become convinced that the outside world is a hologram, and I’m about to embark on a lucrative YouTube career persuading flat earthers…

Why Ice Levels Keep Showing Up In Video Games, Even Though Most Of Them Are Bad

In games as in life, slipping and sliding on ice patches while torrents of snow transform your eyelashes into crystalline daggers can be frustrating, to say the least. And yet, ice and snow levels are a time-honored trope in video games. On this week’s episode of Kotaku’s Splitscreen podcast, we try to figure out why…

Covid Relief Bill Still Includes Felony Streaming Act, But Twitch Streamers Are Probably Safe

Earlier this month, Republican senator Thom Tillis managed to graft an act that would turn streaming copyrighted material into a felony onto the much-debated omnibus spending bill, which also includes a paltry second covid relief check, among many other things. After even more debate (and many concessions), Congress is poised to pass the bill this…

An Esports Team Signed An 8 Year Old, But Nobody Is Sure If It’s Legal

If nothing else, Team 33 certainly made a splash when it arrived on the esports scene earlier this month. In a press release, the previously unknown organization boasted of a Hollywood team house that had already played host to big names like Janelle Monáe, Post Malone, and Drake. But it wasn’t glitz and glamour that…

What Is Even The Point Of Giving Awards To Video Games

‘Tis the season to feel mildly embittered at basically all times. I speak, of course, of awards season, during which countless games take home trophies and plaques (or pictures of trophies and plaques), but not the ones you want to win. What, really, is the point, though? On this week’s episode of the Splitscreen podcast,…

Streamers Flabbergasted After Twitch Partially Bans The Word ‘Simp’

It’s been yet another long 24 hours for Twitch—the latest in what’s shaped up to be an agonizingly long year for the company (and also everybody on Earth). Yesterday afternoon, Twitch held a live town hall with the goal of illuminating recent policy changes and features around DMCAs, sexual harassment, ads, and other hot-button issues.…

Twitch’s Top Clips Are Full Of Cyberpunk 2077 Nudity

Once the year 2077 rolls around, people apparently won’t bat an eyelash at unclothed dicks, breasts, and butts. In 2020, however, this is still very much an issue, especially on Twitch, where on-screen nudity frequently results in temporary or indefinite suspensions. But the platform does make exceptions for big games, with Cyberpunk 2077 being the…

CD Projekt Is Adjusting Cyberpunk 2077‘s ‘Distracting’ Amount Of Dildos

The first time I stepped out of my character’s apartment in Cyberpunk 2077, I expected to be greeted by a vast world of machine-powered possibility. Instead, I found a dildo. It was sitting next to a random NPC’s foot in my apartment building, near a discarded magazine and some other trash. “That’s weird,” I thought.…