Culture

Valorant Will Be Available To Everyone On June 2

Since early April, Valorant, Riot’s new mashup of Counter-Strike and super powers that not even tactical peeking can stand up to, has been in closed beta, available only to those who luck out while watching streamers play on Twitch. In a couple weeks, however, that’s going to change. Per a press release from Riot, Valorant…

How’s It Going?: Positive Thinking Edition

It’s Thursday, which makes it almost Friday. Welcome back to our daily open thread. I was reading an article on CNN this morning about Trump’s roots in Norman Vincent Peale’s brand of positive thinking, a connection I didn’t know much about. The CNN article reads, “But in a way, [Trump spiritual advisor Paula] White perfectly…

This Is The Raymond Amiibo Animal Crossing Fans Deserve

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has blown up since it launched in March, and Raymond, the most sought after villager in the game, has blown up alongside it. Now there’s a fan-made Amiibo honoring his ascendance. Created by Twitter user 5_pandasan, the Amiibo perfectly captures the cat’s refined charm and lowkey asshole-ness (thanks NintendoLife). Pandasan even…

Doom Eternal Losing Controversial Anti-Cheat Software In Next Update

Doom Eternal has only had Denuvo anti-cheat software for a week, and already Id Software has agreed to take it out following the backlash from some PC players. “Despite our best intentions, feedback from players has made it clear that we must re-evaluate our approach to anti-cheat integration,” Marty Stratton, the game’s executive producer, wrote…

Track: Dreams | Artist: The Cranberries | Album: Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?

Tokyo Sky Tree Tokyo, Japan. By Tony Kwan. 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

Track: Bubblegum | Artist: Cookii

Spirited Away 2: Bathhouse Boogaloo

Jéssica Brasil is an artist from Brazil. You can see more of Jéssica’s stuff at her Instagramand ArtStation pages

Wind Waker Speedrunners Conquer Its Terrible Battleship Minigame

Randomness can be a problem in even the best-planned speedruns. No matter how good a runner gets at memorizing patterns and performing intricate maneuvers, an unlucky bit of RNG can ruin a run in no time flat. This was frequently the case with the “Sinking Ships” minigame in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker,…

Customs Seizes 86,000 Fake Pokémon Toys For Very Weird Reasons

US Customs has seized 86,000 bootleg Pokémon figures, worth an estimated $600,000, hidden inside a shipment arriving from Hong Kong earlier this week. Which is fine, that happens all the time, and fake Chinese stuff is violating trademarks, so this is literally Customs’ job. But instead of just saying that the figures are fake and…

EA Is Releasing Command & Conquer And Red Alert’s Source Code

We’re all very used to seeing modern games ignore or even remove mod support, so it’s nice to see that EA of all publishers is going the extra mile for the modding community with the upcoming re-releases of the original Command & Conquer and Red Alert In a post on the project’s Reddit page, producer…

Shady Key Reseller G2A Fucks Up Spectacularly

Last year, G2A—a supremely suspect grey market seller of PC games—offered to pay studios 10x the cost of their games if it was found to be selling stolen keys. Only one company took them up on the offer, and whaddya know, it turns out G2A was selling a bunch of stolen keys. Factorio creators Wube…

I Refuse To Regret Spending $450 On A Bright Pink Gamer Chair

Gamer chairs have always struck me as an incredibly funny concept. In 2006, a desperate luxury car seat company called DXRacer decided to roll the dice on pivoting to video games, laying down the racing car-esque blueprint for gamer chairs as we know them. So now professional players and streamers achieve maximum performance in disembodied…

The body of former WWE wrestler, martial artist, and actor Shad Gaspard was found Wednesday morning on California’s Venice Beach, after being carried away by a riptide over the weekend while saving his 10-year-old son’s life. Gaspard was the body model and a motion-capture artist for Kratos in 2018’s God of War.

System Shock 3 Now In The Hands Of Tencent [UPDATE]

OtherSide Entertainment announced this morning that the long-awaited System Shock 3 will now be handled by Chinese conglomerate Tencent. “We are happy to announce that Tencent will be taking the System Shock franchise forward,” an official statement reads on both OtherSide’s website and Twitter. “As a smaller Indie studio, it had been challenging for us…

Stadia Exclusivity Will Keep Serious Sam 4 Off PS4 And Xbox Until 2021

Serious Sam 4 is coming to PC and Stadia in August 2020. Yes, you read that right… Stadia. While previous previews of the game indicated it would also appear on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Google’s cloud gaming service will get Serious Sam 4 long before any traditional consoles. “The game is still coming to…

Borderlands 3’s Powerful Cartel Anointments Will Still Drop After Event Ends

While the neon-soaked mission itself is pretty dang fun, Borderlands 3’s ongoing “Revenge of the Cartels” event has been embraced by the community for another reason: the introduction of weapon anointments that raise damage to astronomical levels. There was some worry that these anointments would no longer appear on drops after the event ends in…

How’s It Going?: Homemade Edition

Welcome to Wednesday, and welcome back to our daily open thread. Last night for dinner I had a tomato sandwich with greenhouse tomatoes from my CSA, homemade bread, and homemade mayo. I will admit to smugly eating the sandwich while being very impressed with my culinary prowess. (I’ve never made mayo before—it is surprisingly not…

Track: Innocence | Artist: Hitomi | Album: I Am 

Report: Hideo Kojima’s Longtime Producer Joins Tencent

Ken Imaizumi is a longtime collaborator with Hideo Kojima. He produced Metal Gear Solid 4, both Metal Gear Solid V installments, and, most recently, Death Stranding. According to South China Morning Post, he has now joined Tencent as the game arm’s production director. Tencent also told the publication that Halo 4 lead designer Scott Warner…