Culture

How To Create An Indie Game Revolution In Japan

Some of the greatest games ever developed were made in Japan. The institutional know-how and skills are there. But the country’s indie game scene still hasn’t broken through in a major way like its counterparts in the West. That’s something a new project called Asobu it’s hoping to change. Meaning “play” in Japanese, Asobu is…

Conan Exiles‘ First Big Expansion Enters Early Access

Launched today into early access on PC with a full release planned for early next year, Isle of Siptah is the first major expansion pack for Funcom fantasy survival game Conan Exiles. It’s a whole new magical map to explore, complete with strange magic, deadly dungeons, and a bunch of fresh content for players to…

AMD’s New Video Card Is Now Live In Fortnite

AMD isn’t ready to reveal everything about its upcoming Radeon RX 6000 series video cards to the world, but the company’s fine with giving gamers a little sneak peek at the card’s design via a honking-big virtual model within Fortnite Creative. Just log into Fortnite Creative, enter access code 8651-9841-1639 into the terminal, and you’re…

Ys VIII’s Music Gets The Adventuring Party Started Right

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s new, daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Today’s track is a Ys VIII tune that’s guaranteed to get you in the mood for an epic journey on a mysterious island, which is a thing we used to be able to do in…

Track: Mugenmirai | Artist: Perfume | Album: Future Pop 

Crusader Kings III vs Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Is Exactly The Kind Of Mod We Need

The modding scene for Crusader Kings III is still very much in its early days—we’re a while off from seeing Westeros, for example— but fans are still coming up with cool little tweaks and additions. The best one I’ve seen so far is Tony Hawk’s Pro Crusaders 1+2, which adds skating as a lifestyle trait.…

Razer Left Around 100,000 Customers’ Details Just Hanging Around On The Internet

Being as popular as they are, peripheral specialists Razer have a lot of people’s personal details! And for a few weeks, thanks to a “misconfigured Elasticsearch cluster”, those details—including home addresses—were kinda sitting around in the open, not even protected by a password. As Ars Technica report, the cluster was found last month by security…

Fall Guys Cheaters Were Sent To Cheater Island

Following in the footsteps of games like Apex Legends, Fall Guys developers Mediatonic decided that if people were going to cheat in their game, then they could all go somewhere off to the side and cheat together. In a Twitter thread posted earlier today (which starts below), they said after some initial testing in the…

EA Is Killing Off The Origin Name Entirely

After nine anticlimactic years the Origin name is no more. Going forward, EA will simply refer to its PC gaming client as the “EA desktop app.” The video game publisher announced the move inan interview with GamesIndustry.biz, saying the name change is part of a larger overhaul of the platform intended to “to create a…

Navy Twitch Stream Spirals Out Of Control Due To Slur, War Crime Jokes [UPDATE]

Up to this point, the U.S. Army and Navy’s recruitment efforts on Twitch have been fraught to say the least, but over the weekend, the latter courted outright disaster. During a Saturday evening stream of Twitch mega-hit Among Us, players named themselves after America’s atomic bombing of Japan in 1945 and the N-word. During the…

Pop-Up Ad For Sex During Magic Tournament Shows Why The Game Needs A Spectator Mode

A porn spam bot was the icing on the cake during a Magic: The Gathering Arena tournament this weekend, in an event whose technical problems reminded us all that the digital card game’s client desperately needs a spectator mode. “Hi, I’m looking for sex with a stranger,” a fake DM from a no doubt very…

Avengers Players Are Frustrated By Its Terrible AI Teammates

Marvel’s Avengers includes the option to play online, or you can play solo with computer-controlled teammates. Playing with AI means you don’t have to deal with the game’s lousy matchmaking, but it does mean you have to deal with the game’s terrible AI, who appear in every mission where you don’t have a full roster…

We Asked A Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Master How To Combo Like A Beast

There are people out there who don’t play Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater like you and me. Where I’m happy with barely reaching the high-score goals on each level, more serious players have been pushing the limits of the series to rack up millions (and sometimes billions) of points for years. With the release of Tony…

Chess Is An Esport, According To Twitch Star And Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura

Sometimes it’s the small sprinkles of strangeness that stand out the most. If you had told me several years ago that 2020 would bring daily disasters of incomprehensible consequence, I probably would have believed you, because we’ve been trending in that direction for a while now. The idea of an esports organization signing a chess…

Here Are The 172 Xbox Cloud Gaming Launch Games

Tomorrow is the official launch day for cloud streaming with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and Microsoft has revealed the full list of 172 titles users will be able to stream to their Android phones and tablets, from A Plague Tale: Innocence to Yakuza Kiwami 2. It’s not the full Xbox Game Pass library, but a…

Microsoft is retiring the introductory price of Xbox Game Pass for PC. Starting September 17, it’ll jump from $5 a month to $10. If you’re already signed up, you’ll keep your old rate for one more billing cycle.

How’s It Going? End Of The Line Edition

Welcome to the final installment of our daily open thread. There is a new morning hangout, and it’s got music and everything. Our daily “How’s It Going?” posts started up many months ago as a means to help our community during the whole shelter-in-place thing, giving us a place to chill and hang. Now there…

Leaked Vids Reveal The Oculus Quest 2, A VR Headset That’s Gonna Get Dirty [Update]

Last year, Facebook untethered virtual reality fans from their computers with the standalone Oculus Quest, one of the best ways to experience VR. Earlier today a pair of videos originally uploaded to the Facebook Blueprint website revealed the Oculus Quest 2, a higher-resolution, more powerful standalone virtual reality headset with a white strap that’s sure…

Halo 3: ODST Comes To PC September 22

Halo 3: ODST comes to PC as part of the Master Chief Collection on September 22. PC players will finally get their chance to guide a group of orbital drop shock troopers through the streets of New Mombassa while listening to Nathan Fillion talk. Halo 3: ODST’s release means Halo PC fans are only waiting…

The Week In Games: Too Many Marios!

Not just one, not just two, but THREE classic Mario games are releasing this week for the Nintendo Switch. I know a lot of folks are excited about Super Mario 3D All-Stars, but I’ve never liked Sunshine, 64 was never my jam and I already played Galaxy recently via emulation. So I’m going to pass…