Yannick LeJacq

A friendly reminder to Heroes of the Storm fans: I’ll be live-streaming some games I’ll be playing with the game’s developers at Blizzard tomorrow starting at 4:00 pm EDT on the Kotaku Twitch channel. Woo-hoo!! Contact the author at [email protected]

The StarCraft Medic’s New Lines In Heroes Of The Storm Are Less Flirty

Blizzard’s new MOBA Heroes of the Storm is a work of Smash Bros.-style fan fiction that mashes together characters from all the developer’s different universes. Or more accurately: it adapts them. The most noticeable change they made to the iconic StarCraft Terran unit, the medic, is her voice, of all things. Like all of the…

A friendly reminder to all the League of Legends fans: part two of the 2015 World Championship group stage games starts tomorrow at 8:00 am EDT. I’ll be updating our explainer and covering tomorrow’s games as they play out. You can find instructions for how to watch—and read up on what’s happened so far—here Contact…

The World’s Best League Of Legends Player Knows No Mercy

The Korean eSports star Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok is so good at League of Legends that fans have taken to calling him “God.” The honorific makes a lot of sense, given how wrathful the pro player just showed himself to be. In this short clip that recently went viral on the League of Legends subreddit, an…

Track: Monster | Artist: Nicki Minaj, Rick Ross, Kanye West, Jay-Z | Album: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to – and gaming to – at the moment.

Riot Games is teaming up with Tribeca Games for a day-long conference about the art and design of League of Legends, and it sounds like a good time for any New York City-based League fans (such as yours truly). The event takes place on Friday, November 13th. You can read a detailed schedule and buy…

What It Looks Like When A Dota 2 Character Gets Nerfed

The infuriating explosive-trap laying Dota 2 hero Techies were hit particularly hard with the game’s most recent patch. So hard that it looks like they’ve almost disappeared from the game. The above chart was screenshotted from the popular data-heavy Dota 2 site Dotabuff (via Reddit), which pulls information from the game’s API and aggregates it…

Today Riot revealed the full set of ranked rewards League of Legends players will receive at the end of the 2015 season. The most exciting bit of news is that the heartless mercenary champion Sivirwill get this year’s victorious skin. I’m genuinely bummed that I can’t get that. Congrats to everyone who will!

Heroes of the Storm has finally made its loading screens more like League of Legends—AKA better. Today’s patch makes it so you can actually see who you’re going to play against in the upcoming game, even with quick matches. Hooray!!

Heroes Of The Storm Babies Its New Players Too Much

Over the weekend I created a new smurf account for Heroes of the Storm, “smurf” being an alternate account an experienced MOBA player makes, usually to play with friends who are just starting out in the game. What I found to my unpleasant surprise was a far less enjoyable game than the one I’ve been…

Heroes Of The Storm Is Nerfing The Overpowered ‘Infernal Shrines’ Map

Heroes of the Storm put out its new patch notes today, and boy is this a big one. In addition to adding the new StarCraft Medic support hero Lt. Morales and completely reworking a number of struggling warriors, they’re finally making some changes to the game’s maps. Most importantly: the ungodly “Infernal Shrines.” Phew! Infernal…

Riot put out its spotlight for the uber-creepy League of Legends champion Kindred, and their ult looks as bonkers as I was expecting. They also said Kindred’s release is delayed until the 5.20 patch due to “an important, gameplay-impacting issue.” Keep up with Worlds in the meantime with our explainer.

Dota 2 Hero Alchemist Made A Curious eSports Comeback This Weekend

This past weekend saw Dota 2 descend on New York City’s Madison Square Garden theater for the eSports tournament ESL One. One thing that surprised a lot of Dota 2 fans was the return of Alchemist, a hero who hasn’t had a huge impact on the game’s pro scene for a while now. Alchemist is…

The League Of Legends World Championship’s YouTube Chat Is Flooded With Dicks

It just keeps going on like this. Warning: NSFW imagery ahead. Going on: …and on: …and on: …and on: …and on: …and on: …and on: …and on: …and on: …and on: …and on: …and on: You can watch the 2015 League of Legends World Championship on YouTube via the live-stream below: Contact the author at…

I’ve played 999 games of Heroes of the Storm. Staying true to MOBA tradition, I asked the HOTS developers if they would play my 1,000th game with me, and they said yes! We will live stream the festivities next week on Thursday, October 8th, beginning at 4:00 pm EDT. So clear your schedules, because this’ll…

The League Of Legends Champion That Riot Almost Forgot

League of Legends’ most-neglected champion will be getting an update before the new year, the game’s developers have confirmed to Kotaku.The increasingly out of place champion Poppy will finally be getting the update that fans have been asking for since 2013. A Riot rep told me yesterday that Poppy’s revamp has been in “active development”…

The ‘Yelp For People’ App Is A Terrible Idea That Won’t Go Anywhere

A story went viral last night about an upcoming smartphone app named “Peeple,” which bills itself as being like the popular review service Yelp, except for humans instead of bars and restaurants. People are horrified by this idea. I don’t think we need to worry, though, because I seriously doubt much will come of it.…

Facebook was kind enough to remind me that the League of Legends World Championship is officially underway. You can watch the games as they’re played on Riot Games’ Twitch account. We’ll have a lot more to say about the games over the coming month. GL HF!

Dota 2 Lost A Ton Of Players In September

So here’s an interesting statistic: Dota 2, Valve’s hugely popular MOBA game, lost almost 16 percent of its active players in September—the same month that the game’s long-awaited and much-hyped “Reborn” update finally went live for all players. Dota data (try saying that five times fast!) is easily available on Steamcharts, a third-party site that,…

New League Of Legends Skin Makes Brand Look Like The Witch Doctor

Look at this fucking splash art. League of Legends developer Riot Games just added three new champion skins to the hit multiplayer game’s public beta, and staying true to the League brand, they all look very cool. Also very…Blizzard-y? Take Brand, for instance. His base appearance is a dude engulfed in flames with abs so…