Nathan Grayson

Track: Mental Knife | Artist: Hail The Sun | Album: Mental Knife Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Discord’s New Games Tab Is A Lot Like Steam

Last week, Steam added new chat features that took a page from Discord’s book—pretty much the entire book, actually. Now, Discord has added a “games” tab that replicates some of Steam’s most pervasive features. And thus, the circle is complete. Discord’s games tab pulls together game-specific information from across multiple channels, distilling it into a…

The 2018 Steam Summer Sale Is Now Live

Do you love video games and hate having money? Are you ambivalent on the idea of ever getting around to actually playing those video games? Well, GOOD NEWS: it’s Steam summer sale time. The sale just went live and is, as usual, overflowing with discounts large and small. It’s alien-themed this time and includes a…

Fortnite‘s Shopping Cart Woes: A Timeline

Shopping carts are, at this point, Fortnite’s only vehicle. You can ride on them solo or with a friend, and they give you a slight speed boost. Simple enough, right? Wrong. Epic has now pulled them temporarily from the game three different times. Today, just when you thought they were in, Epic pulled them back…

Coder Spends 1,200 Hours Piecing Together Diablo‘s Source Code

If not for a few oversights on Blizzard’s part, the original Diablo’s source code would likely be lost to time. However, thanks to those oversights and some serious dedication from one coder, people can now see (and tinker around with) what makes Diablo tick. Diablo, of course, basically birthed the PC action-RPG genre as we…

Top Overwatch Players Fall For The Oldest Trick In The Book

It didn’t make any sense. “What are they doing, dude?” asked Houston Outlaws tank Austin “Muma” Wilmot as the other team, made up of top-ranked players including LA Gladiators tank Chan-hyung “Fissure” Baek, repeatedly crashed against the holo-shield walls of a relatively lackadaisical defense. Then it hit him: Where’d the payload go? Fellow Houston Outlaws…

16 Studios Removing Alleged Spyware From PC Games After Fan Outcry [UPDATE]

In Mario Kart, red shells target your nearest rival and ruthlessly stop them in their tracks. Everybody hates them. Marketing company Red Shell, meanwhile, helps video game companies more accurately target potential customers with their ads. This fact has not sat well with some players who have recently discovered the software in a veritable kartload…

No, PUBG Is Not An ‘Asset Flip’

On Steam, “asset flip” refers to a game that’s haphazardly assembled from pre-purchased environments, objects, and sound effects for the purpose of making a quick buck. Or at least that’s what it’s supposed to refer to. Over time, the definition of “asset flip” seems to have devolved into “anything that ever uses a pre-made asset,”…

Fallout 76 Leads To Surge Of Interest In The State Of West Virginia

West Virginia is not just a fantastical dystopian hellscape depicted in the trailer for Fallout 76. It’s a real place in the real dystopian nation of America! Thanks to Fallout 76, the state is now seeing interest from actual tourists. The new online survival extension of Bethesda’s wasteland-roaming mega-series is set in West Virginia. Ever…

Track: Evaporate | Artist: Dance Gavin Dance | Album: Artificial Selection Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

You’re saying Brigitte’s name wrong. Fortunately, the voice of Overwatch’s most recently added hero, Matilda Smedius, is here to correct you. Watch (and listen) and learn.

Valve Adds Limits To Steam Achievements To Fight Rise Of ‘Fake Games’

Last year, Valve put limitations on Steam trading cards to stop sketchy developers from makinge a living leeching money from the user-powered trading card economy. Now it’s doing something similar with Steam achievements. In a post in Steam’s private developer-focused Steamworks group, Valve announced that achievements—like trading cards—will now be subject to a “confidence metric”…

Twitch Partners Feeling Burned After Affiliates Receive Features That Took Them Years To Earn

There are Twitch streamers, and then there are Twitch streamers. The platform has tiers: hobbyists, affiliates, and partners. The latter two titles must be earned through lots of successful streaming, and they come with perks that directly impact streamers’ ability to make a living. Now, with the gulf between affiliates and partners closing, tensions are…

The Battlefield Subreddit Has Officially Had It With ‘Historical Accuracy’ Complaints

Battlefield V will have women. When this was revealed during the game’s announcement stream last month, most people said “oh neat” and got on with their lives. A vocal handful, however, found this offensively out of place in their “historically accurate” series about ramping tanks over horses. Weeks later, they still haven’t stopped complaining about…

Ninja Takes Two-Day Break, Loses 40,000 Subscribers

Tyler “Ninja” Blevins might be on top of the streaming world right now, but even he’s not immune to being yanked back down to earth by the sometimes absurdly demanding realities of the job. For the past couple days, Ninja’s been living it up at E3, retweeting several thousand pictures people have taken with him…

Beyond Good And Evil 2‘s Plan To Crowdsource Art From Fans Prompts Backlash

Ubisoft is asking fans to contribute art and music to its upcoming game Beyond Good and Evil 2, with the promise of monetary compensation if their work is chosen. Fans are already diving in with gusto, but critics quickly pointed out the issues with asking people to do work for only the possibility of payment.…

Cyberpunk 2077 Is A First-Person RPG

We got a peek at Cyberpunk 2077 during Microsoft’s E3 press conference, but other than verifying that the cyberpunk setting will, in fact, have mohawks and buildings that appear to have been smuggled out of Blade Runner while nobody was looking, we didn’t actually learn much. Today, CD Projekt divulged some real details. The open-world…

Steam’s New Chat Is A Lot Like Discord

For the longest time, Steam’s built-in chat functionality has not been what I would call good. Today, though, Valve revealed a much-needed modern makeover, and you can try it now. Steam’s new chat functionality makes friends lists more flexible, allowing you to see what friends are up to and organize people in a variety of…

Smash Bros Fans Have Spent A Decade Begging For Ridley, And Now It’s Actually Happening

Samus is no longer the only playable Metroid character in Smash. She’s now joined by Ridley, a menacing space dragon who refuses to die no matter how many times he gets owned. To the casual observer, this is just a neat little thing. To Smash diehards, though, it’s the culmination of years of requests. And…

Nintendo kicked off today’s Direct with a mech game called Daemon x Machina. It’s full of high-speed anime mech action and will be out on Switch in 2019.