Culture

Report: Employees Accuse Twitch Of Indifference To Sexual Assault, Harassment, And Racism

In a new report by GamesIndustry.biz, current and former Twitch employees recount issues of racism, sexism, and assault at the company that they say were never properly dealt with and often even enabled by a white bro tech startup culture. GamesIndustry.biz spoke to 16 employees that span the streaming platform’s history, and their stories paint…

They Finally Did It: Fallout 76 Is Pretty Good Now

Last April I bought a PC copy of Fallout 76 for $17. It was such a cheap price that I finally couldn’t resist trying it out. After five or so hours of doing some quests and building a small shack I called home, I moved on. While I enjoyed exploring the world, the performance issues,…

Did You Let The Vampire Succ, And Other Choices We Made In Baldur’s Gate 3 Early Access

Baldur’s Gate 3 is out in early access this week. While noted Divinity: Original Sin II enthusiast Nathan Grayson and I (noted Divinity: Original Sin II hater Ash Parrish) suggest you wait for the full release before diving in, we wanted to talk about some of the different in-game story choices we made and how…

Fall Guys Introduces Four New Stages And A Mode Selector In Season Two

After a morning of shaky login issues, Fall Guys’ medieval-themed second season is officially here. If you’ve fallen off Mediatonic’s platformer royale in recent weeks, today’s update might be enough to draw you back in—for a little bit, at least. The main draw here is the prospect of playing new rounds. All of the stages…

Sci-Fi Loot Shooter Outriders Delayed Until February, Will Support Free Next-Gen Upgrades

Outriders won’t be out this year after all. The game’s been delayed until February 2, 2021. People Can Fly, best known for Bulletstorm, announced the news in blog post today over on Square Enix’s website. The shooter RPG with a Diablo-like loot system was originally slated to have arrived last summer back when it was…

PlayStation confirms the Kronenbergian adventure game Bugsnax will be out on PS5 and PS4 on November 12. The follow-up from Octodad makers Young Horses was already assumed to be a launch game, but tit’s nice to hear it hasn’t slipped.

Mortal Kombat 11 Is Getting New Fighters, Cross-Play, And Free Next-Gen Upgrades

Rambo and a bunch of other stuff is coming to Mortal Kombat 11 on November 17. First there’s the Kombat Pack 2 which will add Mileena, Rain, and Rambo as new downloadable fighters. People who pick up the new Ultimate edition will get them automatically, while people with the existing version of the game can…

Xbox Deletes Tweet Dunking On PS5 For Having A Removable Stand

The UK Twitter account for Xbox fired some shots at PS5 yesterday in one of the silliest ways possible because it’s 2020 and these are the console wars we deserve. It all began after Sony released a tear-down video of the PS5 highlighting all of the next-gen console’s internal components. The first step in that…

Sonic Adventure 2’s Peppy Pop-Punk Is The Escape From The City I Need Right Now

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Today, we’re finally rolling around (at the speed of sound) to a song that has a money-back guarantee on putting a pep in your step: Sonic Adventure 2’s “Escape From the City.” We’ve run this feature…

Hello Big Soft Friend

Roberto Padula is a freelance concept artist and illustrator from Brazil. You can see more of Roberto’s stuff at his Instagramand ArtStationpages.

Riot’s Australian Office And The Oceanic Pro League Are Shutting Down

Riot Games, makers of games such as League of Legends, Valorant and Legends of Runeterra, has announced the closure of their Australian operations. This story originally appeared on Kotaku Australia The news immediately spread like wildfire among the local League of Legends scene, which has built up around the Oceanic Pro League, the professional circuit…

Chess Tournament Winner Banned, Says Opponent “Was Doing Pipi In Their Pampers”

Like a lot of other sports this year, chess has been having good times online,. Except that is for the very end of the Chess.com Pro Chess League Championships last week, when the winning team was disqualified for “unspecified fair play regulations.” As this feature on Defector reports (go subscribe!), Armenian chess grandmaster Tigran L.…

Your Dogs Won’t Die In The Red Lantern If You Don’t Want Them To

If you’ve ever watched a family pet succumb to disease or age, you know it can be an exceptionally painful moment. That’s why the developers behind upcoming dog-sledding game The Red Lantern are going to allow players to disable deaths entirely. The Red Lantern, available on Switch and the Epic Games Store on October 22,…

Pikmin 3 Deluxe is getting a demo later today on the Nintendo eShop. You’ll be able to transfer your save data to the full game, and completing the demo will also unlock an extra difficulty tier in it, too

Destiny 2 Is Getting Some Wild New Exotic Gear In Beyond Light

Bungie teased a bunch of new exotic guns and armor coming to Destiny 2 in Beyond Light next month in a new trailer today. One of them summons a floating orb that shoots bullets from an alternative timeline. One of the biggest criticisms of Destiny 2 back when it first launched was the dearth of…

PlayStation Trophies Are Getting A Refresh Before They Move Over To PS5

Sony announced it’s expanding the number of trophy levels and changing how they’re calculated ahead of the release of the PS5. Currently, PlayStation Network users have a level from one to 100 based on the total number of trophies they’ve collected while playing games on the platform. Starting later today that will change, with everyone…

Let’s All Cry Because Final Fantasy IX Is Over

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Today we’re going to talk about Final Fantasy IX’s ending theme, an audio sponge that sucks up 40 hours of emotion-packed Japanese RPG and squeezes it out all over every time you listen. Opening themes set…

Postcards From The Future

Amin Faramarzian is a freelance artist based in Turkey who has worked for companies like Lego, Hasbro and Pepsi. We actually featured Amin’s art back in 2014, but man, there’s so much good stuff to check out in 2020 that we’re circling back around and taking a look at pieces he’s done since. You can…

Genshin Impact Is Censoring Words Like ‘Taiwan’ And ‘Hong Kong’

The chat feature in Breath of the Wild-style gacha game Genshin Impact has been found to censor a variety of words, including references to places like Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Tibet. These details first gained prominence thanks to a video uploaded to Twitter by independent journalist Kazuma Hashimoto. The video, which Kotaku has reuploaded to…

DLSS On 240p Video Games Is Some Witchcraft

Nvidia’s DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) tech is one of the most impressive advances in recent video game history, able to take images that look fine and, through a process involving magic, make them look better. Even if you’re playing at some of the lowest settings imaginable. While most of you will be using it…