Culture

Someone Found Their Real-Life Secret Parking Spot In The Division 2

Today we discover how much money you can make streaming games (If you’re famous), learn how to win a fighting game while dead, talk about secret parking spots and more! It’s another installment of Morning Checkpoint. Great Kotaku Content From The Past Week Like most weeks, Kotaku was filled with some great stories. Here are…

Valve Says It Will Remove ‘Off-Topic Review Bombs’ From Steam Scores

Over the past few years, review bombs—people organizing en masse to post negative reviews to a game’s store page to tank its review score—have become one of Steam’s most visible issues. Last year alone, review bombing happened in Steam reviews over everything from women generals to sales that happened too early. Developers have cited this…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for hanging out with a friend who has a dog, which means getting to pet a dog. It’s also for video games. I’ve been banging my head against Baba Is You’s delightful puzzles all week, and I’m really looking forward to having some uninterrupted weekend time to spend with them. I’ll also…

What’s On My Old Dreamcast Memory Card In 2019

While I rush to keep up with new games for work, I also enjoy going back to play games I grew up with. It started with the Sega Genesis and built to include things like the Super Nintendo and Playstation. But one console holds top billing in my heart: Sega’s ill-fated Dreamcast. I booted it…

Making My Friends In The Sims Also Means Including Their Flaws

It’s always weird to make versions of your friends in The Sims I’m friends with these four guys: Mike, Dylan, Sam and Julian. They’re in a band called The Hell Yeah Babies, and I think they’re pretty great. One day while in a group DM with Dylan, I offered to make Sims of them. I…

Track: Goldberg Variations: Aria (by Bach) | Artist: Igor Levit | Album: Goldberg Variations – The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

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.…