Culture

Video Game Studios Across Texas Have Temporarily Closed Due To Winter Storms And Power Outages

Texas, a state whose leadership has long espoused a hyper-individualistic Mad Max apocalypse sort of ethos, has spent the past week putting those ideals to the test. It has not fared well. A record-breaking winter storm led to power outages across the state, as well as food and water shortages. Millions of Texas residents are…

Watch The BlizzCon 2021 Keynote Here

BlizzCon 2021 begins today at 5:00 p.m. ET and according to Blizzard will be about an hour long. This is just the first event of many that Blizzard has planned for BlizzCon 2021. Or as the company calls it, “BlizzConline,” which is a very clunky, silly name. Due to covid-19, Blizzard announced back in September…

Dysfunctional Game Development Comedy Mythic Quest Returns In May

Mythic Quest, the dark workplace comedy about pouring your heart and soul into a creative project only to be undermined by everyone around you, comes back to Apple TV+ for its second season starting May 7, Apple announced today. While the first season saw a game studio fall into chaos as it tried to ship…

Fortnite Gets Street Fighter Crossover [Update]

Update (02/20/2020, 9:05 p.m. ET): Epic Games has confirmed that Fortnite’s next crossover is with the Street Fighter franchise alongside a new trailer. Starting today, this collaboration includes Ryu and Chun-Li player skins, an E. Honda glider, two pickaxe skins, and a bunch of emotes. Our original story follows below. Fortnite has absorbed just about…

Apple Wants Valve To Hand Over A Bunch Of Steam Info For Its Fight With Epic

Epic Games’ legal battle against Apple over App Store fees continues to drag on into ever weirder and more esoteric fronts. The latest development? Apple is actively trying to subpoena years of in-depth sales information from Valve about all of the games listed on Steam, in order to show that Epic has plenty of other…

Strixhaven, Magic: The Gathering’s Newest Set, Is Hogwarts Without The Terf

Do you still love the Harry Potter franchise but absolutely cannot abide supporting its terfy author? If so, Magic: The Gathering’s latest card set, Strixhaven: School of Mages, might be for you. More than being a simple card game played to demoralize your friends, Magic: The Gathering has its own story, with each new card…

Why Do We Call The Hardest Video Game Enemies ‘Bosses,’ Anyway?

In real life, if you encounter a large being hell-bent on beating the crap out of you, you call them “an asshole” or “a fully grown polar bear, but in my backyard, like in those nightmares I have.” In a video game, you call them “a boss.” That’s weird! Plenty of people want to fight…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for angling the monitor away from prying eyes while you attempt to use the power of gem-matching to get snarky anime women to agree to participate in group sex. That, or maybe playing Animal Crossing. In case you missed it or were purposefully avoiding it, HuniePop 2: Double Date came out on…

Bungie Is Looking To Expand The Destiny 2 Universe

Yesterday, Bungie announced some big plans over the next few years, including new offices, new games, and a new leadership team seemingly in charge of branching out the the Destiny 2 universe into other media. “[O]ne of the primary drivers of Bungie’s expansion is to increase the commitment to the long-term development of Destiny 2,…

‘Seven Rings In Hand’ Is The Best Song From One Of Sonic’s Worst Games

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s ongoing hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Today we’re going to enjoy a song that rocks much harder than the 2007 side-story it sprang from, Sonic and the Secret Rings. No wait, come back. Part of what’s now called the Storybook Series alongside…

Track: Country Road (cover) | Artist: Goose House | Album: N/A 

New Subscription Service Is JUST For Crusader Kings II

While you may be increasingly used to paying a monthly fee to get access to a lot of games, Paradox is trialling a new subscription service where you pay to play just one. Which sounds slightly mad until you realise that one game is Crusader Kings II For $5 a month, you’ll be able to…

Streamer Beats Hades With A Literal Pomegranate

In Hades, the pomegranate is a key item, one that grants you very real power by buffing your abilities. The pomegranate also grants unimaginable power in the real world, at least if you’re the streamer Dylan “Rudeism” Beck. He harnessed the power of ancient fruit to beat the game’s final boss not with a controller…

PC Case That Could Burst Into Flames Officially Recalled

As we reported earlier this month, NZXT’s (admittedly lovely) H1 case had an issue where at a certain point it could literally burst into flames. The company reluctantly apologised, but that process has now progressed into a full “recall” for over 30,000 of the cases. The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a full…

Final Fantasy VII Has Been Upscaled To HD Using AI

If you want to play Final Fantasy VII in HD on your PC you could wait for the remake to get ported, or you could play the original game using this mod that employs artificial intelligence to upscale its visuals. While I’ve written about witchcrafty efforts like this previously—with this game, even!—this latest effort by…

A Princess Charm Game Would Be Great, Thanks

During yesterday’s Nintendo Direct presentation, Mario Kart Live developer Velan Studios revealed its next game, Knockout City. But all I really care about is the spunky (and wholly unrelated) little princess that was used to market it. Knockout City publisher EA decided to fill the multiplayer dodgeball game’s reveal trailer with clichéd CG characters that…

Yep, Splatoon Is Set After A Climate Apocalypse

Splatoon 3’s reveal yesterday took many folks by surprise, both because there was little indication beforehand that the aquatic shooter would get a third installment and because of the presence of an upside-down Eiffel Tower in the trailer. No, your eyes weren’t deceiving you: Splatoon is set on Earth, thousands of years after the world…

Mister DeepFuckingValue Goes To Washington

History was made today when Reddit user DeepFuckingValue, who goes by Roaring Kitty on YouTube, opened his Congressional testimony in a hearing about GameStop stock by specifying, for the literal record, that he is not actually a cat. “A few things I am not,” the meme stock icon, whose real name is Keith Gill, said…

Saudi Arabia Acquires $3.3 Billion Stake In EA, Take-Two, Activision Blizzard

Saudi Arabia has utilized its Public Investment Fund to invest over $3.3 billion (that’s $3,300,000,000 for the more visual learners out there) in Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive, and Activision Blizzard, Al Jazeera reported (h/t Eurogamer). This move, undertaken by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (known colloquially as MBS), equates to millions of shares in…

In Bugsnax, Grumpuses Used To Be Frogs With Thicc Butts

Bugsnax developer Young Horses shared some early design concepts for its what-if-we-ate-the-Pokémon-instead, body-horror game, and they are as out there as you’re probably hoping. Starting on the more mild but technically ambitious front, the developers original experimented with making the Grumpus’ relationships more dynamic and fungible: Procedurally generated relationships between Grumpuses could’ve been interesting! It…