Culture

St. Stephen’s Basilica. Budapest, Hungary. By Marcus Patai | Instagram JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line! 

Getting The Band Back Together Again

Danalyn Reyes is a 2D artist based in Dubai who has worked in board games, animation and video games. You can see more of Danalyn’s work at their personal site and ArtStation page

Today, Valve announced an upgrade to Steam Link called Steam Link Anywhere It’s what it sounds like, allowing users to stream games to “computers” anywhere—not just on their local networks. This includes phones running the Steam Link app, so not iPhones. Steam Link Anywhere is in beta now.

In Shotgun Farmers, You Shoot Guns And Your Bullets Grow New Guns

In most multiplayer first-person shooters, you don’t want to miss that clutch headshot because 1) it’ll mean giving up your location, and 2) missing just isn’t fun. In Shotgun Farmers, there’s a third factor to consider: your bullet will embed itself into the ground and sprout a happy little gun tree, which your enemy can…

Playing Devil May Cry 5 Is Like Playing A Musical Instrument

Learning combos in Devil May Cry 5 is not so different from learning a musical instrument; you start out by practicing the simple building blocks and, eventually, you can chain together a stylish set of button-presses that will blow everybody away. On Kotaku Splitscreen this week, we discuss the ’90s leather-clad aesthetic of Devil May…

Never Let Your Friends Choose Your Smash Main

Long-established is the purpose of friends. When you feel like you can’t do anything right, they remind you of the times you did. When you feel like the world’s against you, they loyally stand by. And when you triumph, they celebrate your successes alongside you. All of this, it turns out, it crumpled up and…

Tivoli Girls Volume 1. Melbourne, Australia. By Shawn Danker | Official Site JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line! 

Report: EA Paid Ninja $1 Million To Stream Apex Legends

These days, it’s not uncommon to see big companies promote their games by cutting deals with top YouTubers and streamers, but how much does one of those deals cost? In the case of chameleon-haired Twitch king Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, the number could be as high as $1 million. Citing an anonymous source, Reuters published a…

A Game About Bizarre, Randomly Generated Lives

Yesterday, in BitLife, I was playing as Basil Andre, a french businessman, when disaster struck. I had been slowly climbing the corporate ladder, amassing a family, when suddenly, I got diagnosed with penis cancer. BitLife is a mobile game that bears a lot of similarity to RealLives, a free educational game that was intended to…

Track: Alone in Kyoto | Artist: Air | Album: Talkie Walkie Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Kids Being Kids. Olango Island, Philippines. By Martin Tan | Instagram JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line! 

When An Overwatch Voice Actor Cosplays As Her Character

Actor Carolina Ravassa has been doing video game work for years now, appearing in everything from Grand Theft Auto V to Max Payne 3 to Just Cause 4. But her most famous role is that of Sombra in Overwatch, one she’s now playing in real life as well as the recording studio. At Katsucon earlier…

It’s OK, Sobble

Zeronis, aka Paul Kwon, is a senior concept artist at Riot. You can see more of Zeronis’ work at his Patreonand ArtStation page

Top Apex Legends Streamer ‘Out Of Commission’ After Scooter Accident

For the past month, Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek has been on top of the streaming world. The launch of Apex Legends catapulted the former Counter-Strike pro into a higher echelon of Twitch popularity than he’d ever achieved playing games like PUBG and Call of Duty, bringing him up to 100,000 subscribers and nearly 6 million followers.…

Fake Smash Balls And Bees Might Be The Worst Custom Smash Bros. Mode

On Saturday night I invited some friends over to play Smash Bros., and I’m sorry. I’m not great at Smash, but I think it’s a fun party game. When you get people of varying skill levels together it turns into a raucous, chaotic experience you can’t get anywhere else. I was also hoping that my…

Track: The Poisoned Well | Artist: Quasi | Album: Featuring Birds Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

Card World. Tokyo, Japan. By Jesse Dijk | Instagram JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line! 

Unknown NES Game, Lost For 30 Years, Has Now Been Digitized And Finished

When UWC—a NES game that had been hidden from the world for 30 years—was uncovered last week, one of the first orders of business was getting the game off a cartridge and into the digital realm so that it could be properly preserved. The new owner of the game, Stephan Reese, aka Archon 1981, said…

The Best Stories Hidden In The Division

The Division 2 launches this week, and I can’t wait to hear its audio logs. I mean, sure, the rest of the game might be good, but did you know that the first Division had some great audio logs? The serious, politically fraught main story of Tom Clancy’s The Division is the only narrative element…

The Week In Games: White House Down

Prepare to collect some loot and beat the DC heat, The Division 2 launches this week on PS4, Xbox One and PC. I played a lot of the first game and after playing the beta for the upcoming sequel, I’m excited to jump back into the grind. Oh and I’m excited to close so many…