The 2014 reboot of Epic’s beloved Unreal Tournament arena shooter series that was billed as a “collaboration” between a small team at Epic and the community is no longer officially being worked on, according to Epic. “Unreal Tournament remains available in the store but isn’t actively developed,” Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney told…
One of the original appeals of the Overwatch League’s formula was the idea of teams traveling around the world to play in each others’ home cities, surrounded by whooping, hollering, body-paint-covered hometown crowds. But that didn’t happen during season one, and reports afterward alleged that it wouldn’t be a thing until 2020. Now, though, OWL…
It’s one thing for a gaming company to announce a Steam competitor—and believe me, many have—but it’s something else entirely when the developer behind the world’s biggest game does it. Epic’s upcoming game store seems to have already gotten under Steam’s skin, but even before the announcement yesterday, one Epic employee spent countless long hours…
Valve has explained the Steam algorithm troubles that led to smaller games losing traffic. It started with an early October bug that made the “More Like This” section of pages go haywire in favor of “the most popular games on Steam,” and while Valve fixed that shortly after, it kept a change that factored in…
Track: Diamond Lightning | Artist: Minus The Bear | Album: Infinity Overhead Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.
Over the years, people have pondered what a viable competitor to Steam’s dominance would look like. Who would pull it off? What would be their silver bullet, capable of hobbling even Valve’s game-slinging behemoth? Late last week, Valve announced that Steam will take a lesser cut of revenues from games that sell $10 and $50…
Plenty of games contain Easter eggs that reference other games. For example, literally every game released since 2012 has included a Dark Souls bonfire in an obscure corner of at least one map. Rare, however, is the Easter egg that straight up transforms a game into the thing it’s referencing. Just Cause 4 has gone…
Steam is constantly evolving behind the scenes, but the latest reorganization of the storefront’s molecules has left some developers scratching their heads. Now, if a game makes $10 million, developers have to share less money with Valve. And if it hits $50 million, even less than that. Valve announced tweaks to Steam’s revenue sharing system…
Every time Overwatch players hear Zarya shout her trademark Russian ult line—“Ogon’ po gotovnosti!”—a sinking feeling of inevitability sets in. It means that you and your team are going to be dragged together by a tiny black hole and then lasered down, or obliterated by a ghost dragon or something. There is, however, a hard…
Despite an avalanche of over-the-line jokes and gaffes that cost him deals and a show, as well as an ever-changing YouTube landscape, Felix “Pewdiepie” Kjellberg remains the king of YouTube mountain. For now, anyway: An Indian music production company called T-Series has been fast on his heels for a while and—with their subscriber counts at…
Ice Poseidon. Sweet_Anita. Trainwreckstv. “Twitch thots.” “Boobie streamers.” If any of these names and phrases ring a bell, you may have a subreddit called Livestreamfail to thank—even if you’ve never heard of it. With nearly 400,000 subscribers, Livestreamfail has become one of the biggest external hubs for Twitch content. Maybe even the biggest. Users generally post…
Arthur Morgan wanted to turn his horse around and head for the hills. He wanted to be anywhere else, even if it was back at camp with that scar-faced good-for-nothing John Marston. And yet, he felt compelled by some mysterious force to ride toward a house containing a prospect more fearsome than any outlaw gang,…
Yesterday, a thread full of conversations between a handful of speedrunners gained traction on Twitter. Said to be screenshotted from a private Discord, these conversations included derogatory comments about women as well as transphobia and antisemitism. After some initial hesitation, speedrun charity organization Games Done Quick said last night that these streamers will no longer…
Track: Self Aware (Remix) | Artist: Andrés | Album: Heroes, Villains, And All That Jazz Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.
Prodeus is a shooter that tries to replicate the look of FPSes of old, but with modern graphical techniques. I’m not sure how I feel about its purposefully pixelated aesthetic, but it’s certainly different. And by different, I mean “like somebody put Dooms 1-4 in a blender.” It’ll be out next year.
This animation of a showdown between Overwatch’s Hammond and Fortnite’s black knight is pretty impressive. The creator, YouTuber 3D Print Guy, made the models from scratch and then pitted them against each other in a miniature battle for the ages. He says he’s done work for Pixar, and it shows.
When I tell friends about video game protagonist murder mystery The Hex—the latest game from the creator of the surprisingly demented Pony Island—I always say two things: 1) that they need to play it as soon as they can, and 2) that it’s about something completely different than it claims to be. The Hex is,…
If you’ve ever wondered whether or not Abraham Lincoln and Napoleon Bonaparte would hit it off on a date, the answer is yes. According to AI dating game BadCupid, Lincoln is a charmer whether he’s chatting up reanimated French emperors, Roman goddesses, or Necrodancers. Sherlock Holmes, though? He’s a much pricklier sort. BadCupid is a…
Track: Arriving Somewhere But Not Here | Artist: Porcupine Tree | Album: Deadwing Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.
Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan has acknowledged that new hero Ashe has aim issues Players have been complaining that it feels harder to aim with Ashe than heroes like McCree and Soldier 76, and Kaplan explained that it’s because of an issue with her aim-down-sight animation. It can feel “a bit off” if you’re playing at…
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