Twitch’s not-so-grand Pogchamp experiment is coming to an end. After replacing the conspiracy-addled face of the popular emote with 35 different Pogchamps in 35 days, Twitch seems to be on the brink of a more permanent arrangement. Tomorrow, viewers will be able to “decide what the future of hype looks like” as part of a…
Twitch streamers, Instagram influencers, and TikTokers just got a potentially very powerful ally: The Screen Actors Guild—American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, aka SAG-AFTRA, one of the most powerful unions in Hollywood. Soon, influencers who create branded content will be able to qualify for union benefits. Speaking to Backstage, a SAG-AFTRA rep explained that…
Emoji Evolution is a simple-looking puzzle game in which you “combine different elements to find a new one” in order to—and wow, this really escalates—“solve the main dilemma of humanity.” It seems like Steam users like it pretty well…or do they? Take another look at that image of its Steam page, and you’ll notice that…
The scene: Grand Theft Auto V’s iconic city of Los Santos. People mill about outside an apartment building, likely plotting crimes. Nothing seems out of the ordinary—except for a lone figure. Clad in suffocatingly tight leather pants and a bulletproof vest, he looks prepared for anything and nothing all at once. He also looks like…
Today, Conor McGregor, famous for falling asleep in public, saw a gamer chair for seemingly the first time in his life. He thinks it’s incredibly funny that it looks kind of like a race car seat, and he really, really wants everybody to know. McGregor, one of the highest-paid people in all of sports, made…
It didn’t start out as something I tried to do. It just happened. The year was 2012. I’d reached the point in Mass Effect 3 where it felt like I was one or two loose ends away from heading into the grand finale. Then, for various reasons, I stopped. It has been nearly a decade…
GameStop is dead, long live GameStop. The embattled chain might be improbably back in the headlines, but that doesn’t seem to have convinced game-shoppers to game-stop avoiding GameStop. So what happens to GameStop now? On this week’s episode of Kotaku’s Splitscreen podcast, we discuss that pressing matter, as well as GameStop’s history as a bonafide…
Genshin Impact’s brand new 1.3 patch, released earlier this week, added new characters, new activities, and a whole new event, but it also took something away: Barbara’s voice. Barbara is a playable character who’s basically a pop star, and before 1.3, her peppy demeanor reflected that. Now her delivery is more muted. Many fans are…
If Emme “Negaoryx” Montgomery’s chat moderator hadn’t gotten up to use the bathroom, six million people would not have seen what happened next. During a stream last week, a viewer asked Montgomery, “What color is your thong today?” Usually, Montgomery doesn’t acknowledge those sorts of messages. But with her mod gone, the message did not…
In the past couple months, the experience of watching Twitch via third-party sites or tools like MultiTwitch has become… fraught. A purple screen sometimes obscures whatever you’re watching. It implores you to tune in on Twitch dot television instead. Eventually, it disappears. Then, every 15 minutes or so, it comes back. As of a couple…
History is the study of literally everything that has ever happened, and by that measure, it is objectively the most interesting of all fields. It’s also just totally, categorically wrong, like, 90 percent of the time. Case in point: You’ve probably heard that E.T. for the Atari 2600 was so bad that it crashed the…
You’ve gotta hand it to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: She sure knows exactly when to hit the “go live” button on Twitch. Once again, sensing the perfect moment to address the gamerly masses, she spent a chunk of last night on Twitch talking with experts about the subreddit WallStreetBets’ shiny new technicolor meme coat. Reddit co-founder…
After a wild ride that took it off the tracks and onto the goddamn Rainbow Road from Mario Kart, the GameStop stock train appears to finally be pulling back into the station. People are blaming market manipulation from stock trading apps like Robinhood for this, but they’re also lumping in a name day traders might…
AverageHarry, a 15 year-old aspiring Twitch streamer from the UK, was in spitting distance of his dream. He’d had a breakout 2020, amassing an audience of nearly 90,000 followers, somewhat ironically off the back of a viral clip in which randos in a hotel lobby made fun of him for streaming. Late last year, he…
Breath of the Wild modder Waikuteru is on a roll. Last week, they salvaged the glorified storage unit that is Link’s house. Now they’ve taken full control of the giant house that houses Link’s house, by which I mean Hyrule. In a new video, Waikuteru demonstrates how a modding breakthrough allows them to edit Breath…
Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, still the streaming world’s best-known crossover sensation even years after the peak of his relevance, sounds like he’s getting a little tired of his every action being hyper-scrutinized by millions of people all the time. In a new profile by The New York Times that, of course, opened with the requisite reference…
If, in pre-covid times, you wandered into your local bar and found it packed to the brim with sweaty, feral UFC viewers, there were a couple reasons why: 1) comradery, but mainly 2) watching UFC events is expensive as hell. This weekend’s Conor McGregor vs Dustin Poirier card weighed in at a whopping $70, the…
It seems like only yesterday that Vicarious Visions released one of the year’s best games in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2—a remake that went the extra mile and then some. As of today, however, the studio is done taking the lead on projects. Activision just announced that it’s been folded into Blizzard. According…
Genshin Impact is one of the more gargantuan and, after a certain point, grindy games currently in existence, but its players remain ravenous for Content. On February 3, they will be briefly sated by a big new event: The Lantern Rite Festival, which will bring with it a new playable character, stories and challenges, and…
This week, America had a normal one. Nothing major or out of the ordinary happened, and no disgraced proto-fascist insurrectionists with mouths wetter than a slip and slide left the highest office in the country. And yet, for some reason, we decided to center this week’s Splitscreen podcast on presidents. To kick off the episode,…
Mode
Follow us
