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CultureTwitchPopular Twitch Streamer Tfue’s Contract With FaZe Leaks As Public Dispute Rages On
Earlier this week, Turner “Tfue” Tenney, a 21-year-old Fortnite pro who is one of the most popular streamers on Twitch, sued FaZe, the esports organization to which he is currently signed. The suit says that the contract between Tenney and FaZe is “oppressive” and “illegal,” arguing that FaZe is in violation of California’s Talent Agency…
By Nathan Grayson Published May 23, 2019 -
CultureTotal Recall30 Years Of Driving Around The Same Video Game Race Track
Silverstone has been home to the British Grand Prix for most of the race’s history, meaning there are over 30 year’s worth of games that let you drive around it. So Chris Rae had the brilliant idea of doing just that, driving one lap around the circuit in eight different games, the first released in…
By Luke Plunkett Published May 23, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryWarframe’s Gas City Is Now Stalked By A Giant Robotic Bird
The Ropalolyst stalks the Corpus Gas City on Jupiter occasionally feasting on the metropolis’ machinery as if the place were made of worms. Part of Warframe’s latest update, the Jovian Concord, the gigantic bird comes from an ancient race of AI terraformers called the Sentient. It’s also one of the game’s best new boss fights.…
By Ethan Gach Published May 23, 2019 -
CultureDetective Pikachu’s Pokemon Designs Are Disgustingly Cute
Stephen Molyneaux was one of the artists on Detective Pikachu, and his work—helping “translate the wonderful designs by Ken Sugimori into the real world”—is so cute I can barely look at it. It’s like staring into the sun. Only the sun is small, and covered in fur. Eevee is a particular hazard. While the designs…
By Luke Plunkett Published May 22, 2019 -
CultureMordhau Players Glitch Out Of Map To Troll Each Other
One upside of multiplayer games from smaller developers is that they can take risks bigger games might not. Mordhau fits that bill, eschewing traditional shooter mechanics in favor of finely-honed sword swinging and lute plucking. The downside is that smaller games can end up jankier than their bigger counterparts. Case in point: Mordhau players have…
By Nathan Grayson Published May 22, 2019 -
CultureValve Is Making Its Own Version Of Dota Auto Chess
Late last year, Valve launched the collectible card game Artifact, a spinoff of Dota 2. It flopped so hard that Valve is now revamping it from the ground up. Earlier this year, Dota’s community beat Valve at its own game, creating Dota Auto Chess, a similarly strategic spin-off that, unlike Artifact, has become one of…
By Nathan Grayson Published May 21, 2019 -
CultureMeet The Modder Painstakingly Rebuilding Fallout 76 In Fallout 4
Fallout 76 had a rocky launch, but it’s since established a community that’s making do with what they’ve been given. Still, some of those fans don’t see Fallout 76 as a proper Fallout game, which, for one fan, gave rise to an idea: What if Fallout 76‘s setting of Appalachia was in a proper Fallout…
By Nathan Grayson Published May 21, 2019 -
CultureValve has posted a lengthy rundown of its thinking surrounding “positive” review bombs, ala what happened to Assassin’s Creed Unity in the wake of Ubisoft’s Notre-Dame efforts. In short, Valve isn’t sure how to handle them: “It doesn’t actually seem to be a review bomb in the way we’ve previously defined them, but maybe that’s…
By Nathan Grayson Published May 21, 2019 -
CultureOverwatch‘s New Anniversary Skins Are All Over The Place
Overwatch’s third anniversary event is live, and it is as Britney Spears once famously said: “The taste of your lips, I’m on a ride. [Roadhog]’s toxic, I’m slipping under.” The new batch of skins runs the gamut from cutesy (albeit infantilizing, when it comes to some fans’ takes on D.Va’s schoolgirl outfit) to literally toxic…
By Nathan Grayson Published May 21, 2019 -
CultureBlizzard Will Release Significant Hearthstone Buffs For The First Time Since 2014
Yesterday, Blizzard announced that it would be nerfing some of the most powerful cards in Hearthstone in an attempt to break up the dominance of two classes: Rogue and Warrior. If you’ve played the game at all since the release of its latest “Rise of Shadows” expansion, you know that these decks were so powerful…
By Joshua Calixto Published May 21, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryStop Quitting Magic: Arena Games Before I Can Beat You Properly
Magic: The Gathering is a game about slowly (or quickly) squeezing the life out of your opponent until they’re demoralized, defeated, and feeling the weight of their many, many mistakes. That’s why I am unhappy with the lot of you serial conceders depriving me of that. I’m not a great player of Magic Arena, the…
By Cecilia D'Anastasio Published May 21, 2019