Nathan Grayson

Pro Overwatch Players Sing Smash Mouth While Obliterating Opponents

Somebody once told me Envision is gonna roll me. It was a very good weekend for Envision, an American pro Overwatch team that’s recently risen up from obscurity to knock a handful of top teams down a few pegs in Overwatch’s official minor league, Contenders. Confirming their status as up-and-comers with a serious upside, they…

Watching Battlegrounds Speed Hackers Get Wrecked Is Extremely Satisfying

They’ve gotta go fast. You’ve gotta be even faster to stop them. If you’ve ever joined a PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds match, only to see somebody moving so quickly that your eyes can barely keep up, you probably encountered a speed hacker. Speed hackers are a seemingly rare yet especially obnoxious breed of cheater who fight less…

In its first ever action against individual influencers, the FTC has ordered that Trevor “TmarTn” Martin and Thomas “Syndicate” Cassell, the two ringleaders of the CSGO Lotto controversy that shook the CSGO gambling scene to its core, “clearly and conspicuously disclose” material connections next time. So basically, don’t do that bad thing again, or else

Battlegrounds Streamer’s Audience Loves His Loud, Obnoxious Stream Snipers

People. People everywhere. Screams like nothing you’ve ever heard, as though ripped from the endless throat of some Eldritch Leviathan. Unsolicited K-pop beats from the dankest corners of the Internet. There’s stream sniping, and then there’s whatever the hell Forsen endures on a daily basis playing PUBG Forsen is a moderately popular streamer who became…

Here’s a cool video tribute to Half-Life 2: Episode 3 by Anomalous Materials. Oh, what could have been.

Battlegrounds Devs Aren’t Sure How They’ll Combat AFK Farmers

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has an idler problem. That much is certain. How bad the problem actually is seems to be in the eye of the beholder Idlers are players who drop into games, only to sit around doing nothing in hopes of slowly accumulating Battle Points, PUBG’s in-game currency. Ever since the game added rare cosmetic…

Five Of The Coolest Indie Games At PAX West

PAX West was a wailing stampede of video games large and small. It’s impossible for a single person to play everything there. That said, I did go hands-on with a bunch of indie games and happened upon some very pleasant surprises. Here are a few of the best. Way of the Passive Fist Way of…

“Is it political? Is it a PC thing?” Fox News’ Steve Doocy asked of a recent profile that sent Mario’s job as a plumber down the drain. The removal of his working class status, his grab bag of millionaire playboy hobbies, his elevation into the highest echelons of the Hollywood elite—how did we not see…

Songbringer‘s Randomized Take On Zelda Works Really Well

Songbringer, with its top-down overworld-wandering, dungeon-spelunking, and item-collecting, takes a lot of cues from classic Legend of Zelda games. I can only tell you so much about it, though, because your adventure will probably be pretty different from mine. When I first started playing the new PC action-adventure, which tells the story of a top-hat-wearing…

Quake‘s Creators Can’t Agree On Who Invented Multiplayer-Only Maps

These days, we take the distinction between single-player and multiplayer first-person shooter maps for granted, but it wasn’t always so. Back in the ancient ‘90s, somebody invented multiplayer-only maps. Today, in the soon-to-be ancient year of 2017, the question is who. During last weekend’s QuakeCon show in Dallas, id Software creative director Tim Willits told…

2K Is Temporarily Pulling XCOM From The App Store, Removing Sid Meier’s Pirates For Good

“Nothing lasts forever,” my mother told me when I was a child. “Not even 2K’s library of games—a few of which are pretty solid—on the App Store. In advance of iOS 11’s launch, 2K has announced that it’s doing some renovations on its lineup of iOS games, upgrading a couple to 64 bit and removing…

Show Us Your Best XCOM 2: War Of The Chosen Propaganda Posters

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen is a very good arts and crafts game that also includes the occasional tactical battle against aliens. Show me your best posters! I’ll get the ball rolling with some of mine. For the sake of avoiding spoilers, I’m gonna stick with some of my early game masterpieces. This is…

Overwatch‘s New Map, Junkertown, Winds Like A Damn Snake

Overwatch’s new escort map, Junkertown, has a precarious, hacked-together feeling to it—a greasy, grimy look that stands in stark contrast to the game’s usual utopian beauty. It never lets you get comfortable, either, mostly because it never stops winding. Junkertown, which is now live on Overwatch’s PC public test realm, doesn’t reinvent the exploding death…

PC Game Adding Option To Disable Popular YouTuber Characters After Players Complain

Shortly after the release of Steam prison break hit The Escapists 2, players flooded the forums with questions. “Who are these people with weird names and funny colored hair,” they wanted to know, “and why can’t I make them go away?” The Escapists 2 is a sandbox game in which you try to escape from…

Track: Silver Tongues | Artist: I The Mighty | Album: Where the Mind Wants to Go / Where You Let it Go  Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

XCOM 2: War Of The Chosen: The Kotaku Review

If you’ve never played XCOM 2, here’s my advice: Skip the vanilla version and start by playing the new expansion, War of the Chosen. It’s the best 2K’s XCOM series has ever been. War of the Chosen is a massive expansion, but it’s not quite a whole new game. Rather, it goes over XCOM 2…

Overwatch‘s Mercy Is More Deadly Now, But She’s Still A Healer

Mercy is a Valkyrie now, and she’s not taking anybody’s crap. Yesterday, Blizzard revealed a surprising overhaul of Overwatch’s most straightforward healer, replacing her uber-powerful resurrection ult—which could potentially bring her whole team back from the brink—with “Valkyrie,” an ult that lets her soar around with a giant clip of super-powered bullets as well as…

A Very Realistic Video Game Simulation Of Mayweather vs McGregor

Boxing legend Floyd Mayweather and UFC megastar Conor McGregor are gonna “fight” tomorrow. Since it’s a boxing match, Mayweather will almost certainly beat McGregor bloody and then use McGregor’s hair to mop up his own bodily fluids. To alleviate that inevitable disappointment and test the two fighters’ true skills, I put on a series of…

UFC Champ Jon Jones’ Steroid Scandal Causes Game Dev Jon Jones’ Twitter To Explode

Tuesday evening, it was announced that UFC light heavyweight champion and greatest fighter of all time candidate Jon Jones failed a drug test. Again. This pissed off legions of fans, a contingent of whom have been taking it out on a game developer named Jon Jones, who—just to be clear—is not a disgraced UFC champion.…

Popular Battlegrounds Streamer Apologizes For Getting YouTubers’ Embarrassing Video Of Him Taken Down

For weeks, one of the most popular PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds streamers, Grimmmz, has been getting tormented not with guns or frying pans, but with car horns. Yesterday, some players gloated about “stream honking” him and posted a video as proof. Upon seeing this, Grimmmz lost his cool and got the video taken down. He quickly came…