Culture

Gods & Monsters Isn’t The First Time Monster Energy Has Been Annoying About Naming Rights

Monster Beverage tried to stop Ubisoft from trademarking the name “Gods & Monsters” earlier this year to prevent confusion between its brand of highly caffeinated sodas and the upcoming action adventure game. It turns out this is the sort of thing Monster does a lot. Monster routinely challenges “monster”-related trademarks, including, tactical gear, ice cream,…

Twitch Removes Stereotypical Emotes Meant To Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month

Earlier today, Twitch announced several initiatives to kick off National Hispanic Heritage Month, a 30-day period for celebrating the “histories, cultures, and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.” As part of this, Twitch added the ability to customize emotes with accessories from those cultures,…

Twitch Streamers Are Furious About New Mid-Stream Ads They Can’t Control

The internet is a hell dimension powered by unchecked data collection and advertisements. In an ideal world, ads would be kept to a minimum, allowed only on the backs of magazines people keep in their bathrooms, which nobody actually reads. But even in this fallen world, there’s a point at which ad proliferation becomes ridiculous.…

Rocket League is going free-to-play next week on September 23. That’s also when the game will move to the Epic Games Store and no longer be for sale on Steam. The game’s seasons will reboot then as well, starting back at one.

Fall Guys Introduces Remixed Stages In Mid-Season Update

If you memorized the stages in Fall Guys like you would the freckles of an ex, you might’ve done yourself a disservice. Today the latest patch for the game went live, and it introduced significant tweaks to some of the stages in this bubblegum-colored platformer royale. Even seasoned players might get grabbed by surprise. For…

Nintendo Switch Bans Nicknames Like ‘ACAB’, ‘Nazi’, And ‘Covid’ In Latest Update

A 'bad word' list has expanded based on recent events

Undertale Creator Says Next Chapter Of Deltarune Is Almost Done

Nyeh heh heh! Today marks the fifth anniversary of the release of Undertale, and creator Toby Fox is celebrating the milestone with new information on the progress of its sequel, Deltarune It’s been two years since the first chapter of Deltarune was released for PC/Mac, PS4, and the Nintendo Switch. In a post today on…

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…