Multiple groups are in the process of organizing protests set to take place outside BlizzCon, the annual convention held by game developer Blizzard, in response to its suspension of a Hearthstone player for expressing support for Hong Kong during a live event. Today, digital rights non-profit organization Fight For The Future launched a website and…
After a week of controversy surrounding its decision to boot Hearthstone pro Chung “Blitzchung” Ng Wai from a tournament and suspend him for a year for delivering a pro-Hong-Kong message during an official broadcast, Blizzard has finally made a statement about the situation. It plans to allow Blitzchung to collect his prize money after all…
Ever since Hearthstone pro Chung “Blitzchung” Ng Wai got suspended for a year by Blizzard after making a declaration of support for Hong Kong earlier this week, the issue of politics during esports streams has been a hot topic. The head of Fortnite studio Epic Games, for example, said he supports players’ right to speak…
Earlier today, I was reading over the PC hardware specifications for the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and, when I reached the hard drive space requirement, did a double-take. 175 GB. For one game. My hard drive currently has less than half that space free for all games. And Modern Warfare is far from…
Earlier this week, three collegiate Hearthstone players on the American University team held up a sign that read “Free Hong Kong, Boycott Blizz” during a stream broadcasted on Blizzard’s official Hearthstone Twitch channel. They expected a suspension similar to the one that, the day before, putpro player Chung “Blitzchung” Ng Wai on the sidelines for…
We’ve all been there: Your favorite game drops a big update, and you’re desperate to find out what’s changed. Then you slam face-first into the wall of text that is the patch notes, and your enthusiasm deflates like a punctured whoopee cushion. Reading is a lot of work. What if someone could just read the…
Today, an armed gunman in Halle, Germany attacked people outside of a synagogue on Yom Kippur, one of the holiest days on the Jewish calendar, killing two and injuring at least two others in the process. He livestreamed his attack on Twitch, during which he referred to himself as “Anon” (likely referencing 4chan or 8chan)…
It’s the goose’s world. We just live in it. And what the goose wants? The goose gets. As one player recently demonstrated, it’s just a matter of time. YouTuber TerakJK decided to embark on a quest to collect every item in Untitled Goose Game, and it took seven hours for them to mostly succeed. They…
It’s not every day that a series with as much legacy and history as Destiny suddenly orbital-drops onto Steam. This has resulted in a horde of Desti-neophytes rushing to see what all the fuss is about. Are they enjoying diving into the deep end of Bungie’s loot ocean of a game, though? Yes and no.…
People Make Games, a YouTube channel founded by former Eurogamer video maker Chris Bratt and animator Anni Sayers, has concluded a year-long investigation into Bachir “Athene” Boumaaza, a YouTuber who got his start with troll-y video game antics but went on to form a pseudo-religion called Neuro-Spinozism and is now the face of an organization…
These days, Twitch streaming is an avalanche that drowns potential viewers in a daily rush of new names and faces. No matter how much you watch Twitch, you’ll never be able to keep up with even a fraction of the tens of thousands of partners and their daily streams, which generally last multiple hours. As…
Teardown is a heist game where everything is destructible. Levels unfold in two phases: First, you bust up the level and build makeshift structures to create the most efficient pathway between objectives possible. Then you swipe an item and race against the clock to collect all the rest before security shows up. Hopefully, your procession…
The sun is bright. Blinding, almost. It is late afternoon on the last day of TwitchCon, and I have been waiting in line for 40 minutes. I’m not in the convention center, but rather, about half a mile away, outside a San Diego pizza restaurant called Ciro’s. The line wraps around the building. Well over…
“You can ruffle your feathers at people. It’s fucking great. I love that game! Who plays Goose Game?” Blink 182 bassist and vocalist Mark Hoppus bellowed to a cheering crowd at last night’s TwitchCon party. The band headlined the party, which was open to all attendees and took place in a stadium in San Diego.…
Tucked away in the furthest back corner of TwitchCon, there’s a Blockbuster booth. Yes that Blockbuster: the mostly-defunct video rental store. What is this ode to entertainment’s now-distant past doing at a convention dedicated to the cutting edge of its present? Advertising an officially-licensed Blockbuster board game, it turns out. It’s a ‘90s-stolgia party game…
Twitch, like so many other platforms on the “free” internet, runs on ads. These ads are annoying as hell. They also represent a raw deal for the majority of streamers. Soon, however, both those things are going to change. As part of today’s TwitchCon opening ceremony, the company announced a slew of upcoming changes, including…
“There’s no reason why they shouldn’t have an accessibility tag, or an “a11y” tag—Twitter speak for accessibility. If Twitch is listening, please give us that tag. We’ve been asking for over a year now,” said streamer AccessibleGamer during TwitchCon’s “Streaming With Disabilities” panel. He added that most Twitch tags describe streams themselves—not streamers—but there are…
Twitchcon’s show floor is notably lacking in video games. This makes sense; game makers have far less to gain from being at a show where most people are here to see streamers, not play games. In previous years, that didn’t stop a fair number of video game companies from having presences. This year, however, it’s…
Earlier this month, Bastion, Transistor, Pyre, and Hades developer Supergiant Games put on an orchestrated concert to celebrate its tenth anniversary. You can watch it in its entirety now. It features songs from all the games’ soundtracks and is really just an immensely good performance, with some magnificent vocal harmonies and powerful orchestration. There’s also…
I emerged from my three-hour The Last of Us Part II demo session tense and anxious, a coiled fire hose of pent-up adrenaline. I’d just piloted a now-19-year-old Ellie through peril after peril, amassing a grisly body count along the way. Few of those kills were clean. Many were desperate knife flurries, death by a…
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