Over the past two days, I’ve played around 10 hours of Destiny 2. I have no idea what is happening. I’m a Destiny newcomer. While it is technically true that I played exactly one hour of the first Destiny back in 2014, I barely remember it. When I began playing Destiny 2 with friends a…
Twitch’s past three weeks have been bleak, to say the least. Late last month, the company abruptly purged thousands of streamers’ videos and advised them to delete all remaining clips in advance of a massive music industry DMCA crackdown—one it had known about for months, but failed to adequately warn streamers about until it developed…
Any time there are millions of people itching to play a new expansion, there’s bound to be difficulties. You might even call it Destiny… 2: Beyond Light’s rollout, which is happening right now. Today, Bungie’s sci-fi flavored entry in the “bad guys fall down, numbers go up” genre is within spitting distance of a new…
Nearly two weeks ago, Watch Dogs: Legion came out. One day later, I booted it up on my PC for a breezy three-or-so-hour play session. One day after that, I once again tried to play the latest cyberpunk entry in a genre that, for expediency’s sake, we will just call “Ubisoft,” only for the loading…
You only get one chance to make a first impression, and back when the PlayStation 5 was officially revealed in June, Bugsnax absolutely nailed it. Its sing-song-y trailer coated an otherwise standard next-gen presentation with a candy-sweet outer shell, and the song itself achieved meme status almost instantly. But is it actually a good game?…
Can you feel it? That tremble in the wind, that sense of possibility thrumming all around you? That, friends, is the approach of relatively minute, in many ways arbitrary change. The next generation of consoles is nearly upon us, and now you have a decision to make: Buy, or wait? On this week’s episode of…
Teardown’s central contradiction should be infuriating. True to its name, you can tear down basically any structure in a level, up to and including the ground beneath your feet. But you shouldn’t! I repeat: You, functionally all-powerful to an extent few video games have ever allowed, should not destroy everything the first chance you get.…
An elderly man contest is happening today. It is the product not of a functioning democracy, but a system fueled by corporate lobbying, vast fortunes, and the whims of the wealthy. So let’s have a look at what some video game executives have been up to recently. (This information was obtained using OpenSecrets.org, a database…
Giving money to streamers can be weird. It makes sense when a streamer is a scrappy up-and-comer for whom even a few coins in the cup can make a difference, but we live in an era in which big streamers are millionaires with exclusive contracts and brand deals. While popular streamers have expressed awareness of…
Tuning into Byron “Reckful” Bernstein’s recent daily Twitch streams, you wouldn’t immediately suspect something’s amiss. He’s front and center, playing World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, League of Legends, or any number of other games. Fans frequently make playful remarks, use emotes, and laugh at or with him. But the illusion doesn’t last long, nor is it…
It is once again almost that time: Tomorrow, the scary day will be upon us. In light of that, we did not talk about horror games/movies on this week’s episode of Splitscreen—that would be too obvious. Instead, we made our own. (Also, we talked about things in non-horror games that terrify us and a bunch…
Call of Duty big now. Real big. 250 GB on PC big. Last year, Call of Duty was already big. This year, it is bigger. If 250 GB is too big for you, there are bigness options that make it less big, like a non-4k install that brings the big down to 175 GB or…
It had already been a long wait for World of Warcraft’s latest expansion, the afterlife-themed Shadowlands, when its expected release month of October rolled around, and then it got longer. Blizzard ended up delaying the expansion, citing a need for “additional polish.” Now it’s apparently polished enough to warrant a new release date: November 23. Blizzard…
Master Chief has always had a penchant for bumpy landings, but over the years he’s mostly kept that confined to events inside games. Halo Infinite, however, has weathered a last-minute delay and, now, the loss of two directors en route to putting down wheels. According to a report from Bloomberg, Chris Lee, the 343 Industries…
For perhaps as long as Twitch has existed, there has been a myth: On exceedingly rare occasions, if the stars align perfectly, the ever-popular “Kappa” chat emote will turn gold. Some have suggested that a single Twitch user receives golden Kappa abilities every 24 hours. Others believe you have to fulfill highly specific prerequisites in…
You don’t really quit Warframe. When Hades, Baldur’s Gate 3, and a slew of other Extremely Me Games came out last month, I knew I’d be taking a hiatus from the cyber ninja space opera that’d taken over my life, but I also knew I’d be back. Last week, I returned after more than a…
Unprecedented, globe-spanning popularity is cool and all, but it comes with drawbacks. The three-person development team behind AOC-approved deception sensation Among Us has been struggling with hacking issues for quite some time, but late last night, one particular hack forced their hand. The hack, which many players have encountered over the past couple days, is…
When I first wrote about Spellbreak, the battle royale whose battles royale evoke Avatar: The Last Airbender more than Battle Royale, I said that its combat was so good that it could form the backbone of a myriad of other kinds of games, including a more traditional deathmatch. Now that’s exactly what’s happening. And by…
It began on Monday with a simple question: “Anyone want to play Among Us with me on Twitch to get out the vote?” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked on Twitter, and nearly every even vaguely left-leaning streamer on Twitch answered. Mere hours later, AOC had a verified Twitch channel with hundreds of thousands of followers. Tuesday…
It’s finally happening: Twitch is taking action against copyrighted music—long a norm among streamers—in response to music industry pressure. Today, hundreds of streamers received emails from the company stating that videos or clips in their back catalogues had run afoul of copyright rules, resulting in deletion. This, it seems, is just the beginning. Something similar…
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