Nathan Grayson

Track: Make Me Feel | Artist: Janelle Monáe | Album: Dirty Computer Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

I Used To Hate Junkrat, Until I Tried Playing As Him

I have a friend who’s made it his life’s work to master every hyper-annoying character in competitive video games. When Overwatch first came out, he made a beeline to Junkrat. Ever since, I’ve looked upon the simpering trash gremlin with scorn and strife. Today, I’m humiliated to admit that I was wrong. As part of…

Overwatch Pro Embraces Tranquility, Miraculously Avoids Certain Doom

Other Zenyatta players might be stronger, faster, and/or literally Seoul Dynasty’s Ryujehong, but this is, without a doubt, The One True Zenyatta. As part of Blizzard’s Overwatch Contenders Trials series, a player from Thailand named Tae found himself smack in the middle of a veritable ult sandwich and decided to just go with it. Instead…

Mario Odyssey Players Are Breaking The New Balloon Mode

Growing up, you probably played hide-and-seek, and you probably had one friend who was so good at hiding that it felt like they’d vanished. Well, imagine that they could literally phase through walls in order to win, and you’ll have an idea of how Mario Odyssey players are feeling right now. Mario Odyssey’s new mode,…

Fans Have Spent Over $150,000 Cheering Overwatch League Teams On Twitch

Yesterday, Twitch introduced “cheering” functionality to its Overwatch League streams, allowing viewers to express team loyalty with actual money. Oddly, however, none of that money is going directly to teams. In order to use Twitch’s cheering functionality, you have to acquire “bits,” which you can buy in bundles that come out to around a $0.014…

Steam User Develops His Own Way To Find New Games

These days, Steam is one-part library, one-part labyrinth. The sheer volume of games on the service is overwhelming. Valve’s solution to the problem has been to double down on algorithms, but many still don’t feel like Steam is helping them find diamonds in the rough. Enter Steam 250. Steam 250 is a site whose goal…

Blizzard has announced that it’s hosting a Warcraft III invitational tournament at the end of the month. Yes, Warcraft III, the one with strategy and sheep that explode if you click on them enough. Veteran pros like Madfrog and Tak3r will participate in the event, which will be accompanied by balance changes and widescreen support…

Kid Gets Swatted After Popular YouTuber Helps Him Get Thousands Of Subscribers

The past handful of days have been a whirlwind for Peter “Rolly Ranchers” Varady. In that time, the 12 year-old has gone from being just another kid trying his hand at YouTube, to someone with nearly 100,000 subscribers, to a swatting victim. It all began last week with a chance meeting. While streaming Fortnite on…

Twitch Really Wants You To Watch Overwatch League

Twitch is all aboard the Overwatch League train, which makes sense, considering that the streaming service reportedly paid $90 million for a ticket. Now it’s offering Overwatch players incentives to tune in. Today Twitch announced that, in collaboration with Blizzard, it’s gonna start offering in-game rewards to Overwatch League viewers. If you link your Battle.net…

PUBG Streamer Meets Fan, Defeats Him In Gentlemanly Duel

Jake “ChocoTaco” Throop closed in on his final enemy in a tense PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds match. One sniper shot. Missed. Two. Missed. Three. Then Throop noticed something. “Wait,” Throop asked, “is he trying to pan fight?” Throop cautiously approached his fated foe, who was, in fact, standing out with his pan out. “Hey!” the other player…

AI Learns To Play Mario 64, Gets A Star

We’ve seen artificial intelligence learn how to play games like Super Mario World and Mario Kart, but Mario 64 is a whole different animal. Kaze Emanuar is a modder who lives to contort Mario 64 into strange, new shapes and forms. In the past, he’s added online multiplayer, a first-person mode, and portal guns, some…

Despite Player Decline, PUBG Isn’t Doomed

This week, portions of the PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds community whipped themselves into a tizzy over charts showing that the game’s active player base has been in decline since mid-January. This comes amidst a backdrop of growing dissatisfaction with the game. Sites like SteamDB and Steam Charts, which derive their numbers from publicly-available Steam data, show that…

What Overwatch Would Look Like As A Fighting Game

Overwatch has a colorful cast of characters, screen-filling special moves, and a hero named after his own punching arm, but it is not, in fact, a fighting game. Still, it’s fun to dream. This video by TGN imagines what Overwatch would look like as a combo-based, knock-down, drag-out fighting game. The verdict? Surprisingly good, as…

Geguri And Other Overwatch League Players Delayed By Visa Issues

Yesterday, struggling Overwatch League team Shanghai Dragons confirmed that they’d signed Kim “Geguri” Se-Yeon—the first woman to join the league—as well as three other Korean players. Those champing at the bit to see Geguri melt fools with impossibly fast Zarya lasers, however, might want to rein it in a little. As spotted by Unikrn, a…

Shroud of the Avatar, the Ultima spiritual successor from Richard Garriott’s team at Portalarium, is finally coming out next month. The fantasy RPG has been in early access since 2014, and while its path to launch has not been without controversy, it’s now set to launch on March 27.

PUBG Players Gifted Chicken Dinner By Strange Naked Man

Sometimes, you’ve just gotta know your limits. For R0b113 and a friend, it was just another duos match in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, albeit one they were winning. With only two enemies left, they wasted no time dispatching the first, whose last-ditch effort to grab a better position didn’t end so well. And then there was one.…

To Understand Twitch’s New Dress Code, I Went To A Mall

Effective next week, Twitch’s new rules for what streamers are allowed to wear on-camera stipulate, among other things, that your attire “should be appropriate for a public street, mall, or restaurant.” In light of that, I ventured to A Real Mall to scrounge for fashion advice. I picked up some dress code tips along the…

Overwatch League Teams Are Making Their First Trades

Overwatch League’s first stage had some big moments, but it felt like everybody was still trying to find their footing. With the big OWL slumbering in a mighty oak somewhere until February 21, teams are fine-tuning their rosters. It’s been a day of trades and free-agent signings, the former of which are among the first…

Rare Says Sea Of Thieves Will Run Well Even On Crappy PCs

Usually, when developers talk about PC ports of big games, they emphasize top-tier performance. The best possible graphics, the highest resolutions. God rays, 4k, a million frames per second. Rare, though, has taken a different approach with Sea of Thieves The game, Rare says, will run capably on a whole host of different PC configurations…

Dragon Ball FighterZ Mods Introduce Sonic, Nic Cage

It’s the question that’s been asked by fan fiction since the dawn of time: who would win in a fight between Goku and Sonic The Hedgehog? And, more importantly, what would happen if all the purple parts of Frieza were Nic Cage’s face? Thanks to Dragon Ball FighterZ modders, we’ll soon know the answers to…