Nathan Grayson

Overwatch League’s Stage One Finals Gave Us The Wildest Game Of The Season So Far

Every now and then, in competitive games, there are matches where it feels like nobody lost. Yes, San Francisco Shock fell agonizingly short of dethroning the season two heirs apparent the Vancouver Titans. And yeah, they failed to snag $200,000 in bonus cash, having to settle for a second-place prize of half that. But both…

Fallout 76 is coming to Steam “later this year.” Bethesda announced its plans to bring the beleaguered multiplayer spin-off—which released on Bethesda’s own launcher last year—to Valve’s service in a tweet. It also reaffirmed plans to bring future games Rage 2, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot, and Doom Eternal to Steam as well.

Blizzard Says Overwatch Toxicity Is Down 40 Percent

Not so long ago, Overwatch was a poster child for toxicity run rampant in competitive multiplayer games. People regularly trolled and spewed vitriol while a barebones report system did little to stem the tide. Oh, what a difference a couple years (and a smartly implemented endorsement system) makes. Overwatch, like pretty much all competitive games,…

Valve’s Rocky Road To Better Communication About Steam

Credit to Valve: Over the past 15 years, it’s turned Steam into a megalith and kept it relevant with a steady, if slow, stream of new features. But in continually reacting to problems instead of anticipating them, and by keeping communication to a minimum, Valve has left a swath of damage in its wake, from…

Unions Stole The Show At Last Night’s GDC Awards

“I’m not anti-union, but I don’t really think we need them, right?” said Double Fine head Tim Schafer while hosting yesterday evening’s Game Developers Choice Awards in San Francisco. “We’re all great here and in this show. No one here is union and…” Then the stage lights went out. “Oh, right,” said Schafer after the…

Steam Libraries Are Getting An Overhaul 

This week at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Valve announced a series of changes coming soon to Steam. Foremost among them are an overhauled game library and an event system that can be used by developers to keep players clued in about what’s happening in games they own. During a press pre-briefing on…

Epic Says Its Store Won’t Sell ‘Porn Games Or Bloatware’

It’s been a big day for the Epic Games Store. During its GDC keynote, Epic announced a boatload of new exclusives (including Detroit: Become An Epic Games Store Exclusive) and a deal with Humble. Momentum appears to be on the store’s side, with Epic now touting strong early sales and a more curated approach than…

Rainbow Six Siege Change Will Punish Griefers By Making Bullets Hurt The People Firing Them

There are few things more infuriating than getting popped by a teammate in a multiplayer first-person shooter. Rainbow Six Siege’s solution? The digital equivalent of making team killers smack themselves with their own hands and telling them to “stop hitting yourself.” Rainbow Six’s new “reverse friendly fire” feature is intended to address toxicity by making…

Grand Theft Auto V Role-Playing Has Taken Over Twitch

For the past five days, I’ve been glued to Twitch, unable to look away from the virtual car crash that is popular streamer Sodapoppin playing on a modded Grand Theft Auto V role-playing server. Since the middle of last week, popular Twitch streamers have been flocking to a Grand Theft Auto V role-playing server called…

Overwatch League Teams Share Plans And Concerns About Moving To Their Home Cities In 2020

After two seasons of living and playing in and around Burbank, California, Overwatch League teams will finally be moving to their respective cities next year. Players and coaches have told Kotaku that they’ve been grappling with planning for these moves for a while, particularly with respect to players’ already grueling practice schedules. Overwatch League commissioner…

Valve Says It Will Remove ‘Off-Topic Review Bombs’ From Steam Scores

Over the past few years, review bombs—people organizing en masse to post negative reviews to a game’s store page to tank its review score—have become one of Steam’s most visible issues. Last year alone, review bombing happened in Steam reviews over everything from women generals to sales that happened too early. Developers have cited this…

Mutazione is an adventure game that describes itself as “a mutant soap opera where small-town gossip meets the supernatural.” It’s from the developers of Where Is My Heart? and Johann Sebastian Joust, and it’ll be focused on both personal drama and “high-stakes” adventure. It’s coming to PC and PS4 later this year.

Today, Valve announced an upgrade to Steam Link called Steam Link Anywhere It’s what it sounds like, allowing users to stream games to “computers” anywhere—not just on their local networks. This includes phones running the Steam Link app, so not iPhones. Steam Link Anywhere is in beta now.

In Shotgun Farmers, You Shoot Guns And Your Bullets Grow New Guns

In most multiplayer first-person shooters, you don’t want to miss that clutch headshot because 1) it’ll mean giving up your location, and 2) missing just isn’t fun. In Shotgun Farmers, there’s a third factor to consider: your bullet will embed itself into the ground and sprout a happy little gun tree, which your enemy can…

Overwatch’s newest hero, combat medic Baptiste, is coming to live servers on March 19. He’ll presumably be accompanied by a slew of balance changes Blizzard has been testing, meaning that we could be looking at a big shake up to the game’s meta. Or not! We’ll find out next week.

Report: EA Paid Ninja $1 Million To Stream Apex Legends

These days, it’s not uncommon to see big companies promote their games by cutting deals with top YouTubers and streamers, but how much does one of those deals cost? In the case of chameleon-haired Twitch king Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, the number could be as high as $1 million. Citing an anonymous source, Reuters published a…

Top Apex Legends Streamer ‘Out Of Commission’ After Scooter Accident

For the past month, Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek has been on top of the streaming world. The launch of Apex Legends catapulted the former Counter-Strike pro into a higher echelon of Twitch popularity than he’d ever achieved playing games like PUBG and Call of Duty, bringing him up to 100,000 subscribers and nearly 6 million followers.…

Devil May Cry 5 Slightly Censored, But Only On PS4

Devil May Cry is known for many things: great combat, cheesy one-liners, devils that rarely, if ever, actually cry. But it’s not known for nudity. That’s made the occasional flashes of forbidden flesh all the more noticeable in Devil May Cry 5, especially given that how much nudity you see is determined by the platform…

Legend Of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Looks Weirdly Gritty Without Cel-Shading

Two years after its release, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild remains a near-perfect game. It’s also still easy on the eyes, thanks to a cartoony style that’ll stand the test of time for years, if not decades to come. So what happens when you strip away that candy-colored exterior? It looks pretty grim,…

Twitter Account Asks The All-Important Video Game Question: Can You Pet The Dog?

Whether out on the sidewalk, at a party in somebody’s house, or fleeing from a pack of wild dogs, what’s your first instinct—as a rational, sound-minded human being—upon meeting a dog? That’s right: you want to pet it. Video games are meant to let us fulfill our wildest fantasies, and yet, many of them won’t…