Kotaku’s Opinions For The Week July 05, 2025

The Steam summer sale is an annual opportunity to add vast numbers to the teetering pile of games you’ll get around to playing someday. With bonkers 90-percent-off deals, you can grab recent big-name games for under $5, all of which you’ll definitely remember to load up someday. But it’s not just the AAA blockbusters that are cheap right now; the sale also includes fantastic unknown indie games at far less risky prices. - John Walker Read More

I’ve been playing Overwatch since 2019. I finally jumped into Blizzard’s hero shooter after the release of Bastet, a short story following the medic sniper Ana and old man vigilante Jack “Soldier: 76” Morrison, which confirmed the broody ex-Overwatch leader was once in a long-time relationship with a man named Vincent, but the two had long since split. Soldier’s devotion to Overwatch’s cause strained their connection, and eventually, Vincent married and found the life he wanted. At the time, Blizzard came under a bit of fire for sequestering this lore drop in a short story that most of Overwatch’s player base would never see. For years, it felt like Blizzard’s shooter existed in a space of plausible deniability, where it had queer characters but any sign of those identities was stashed away where bigots could ignore it. That all changed in 2023 when the game began an annual Pride Month event celebrating its queer heroes, and this year, it finally made good on a promise it made to Soldier: 76 fans six years ago. - Kenneth Shepard Read More

I’m tens of thousands of feet underwater, here on a mission to uncover the remains of a tragic and colossal accident that saw an oil rig collapse and sink to the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Scotland. I’m here for answers. I’m here for closure. Hopefully I’ll find some mementos to bring back to the families that lost people in the accident. But it’s not just sunken, rusted metal that lines the ocean floor. No, something else is here. Or is it? Am I losing my mind? Strange visions cloud my sight. A sudden metallic thud announces the presence of…something out there in the deep. Am I hearing voices? Is someone there? - Claire Jackson Read More

I have a long-term love of logic puzzle games. I consider Hexcells, Tametsi and the DS’s Slitherlink to be among the greatest video games of all time. Mario’s Picross is surely the all-time best Game Boy game? My phone is very rarely not running at least one of Conceptis Puzzles’ Android apps. So it is with enormous pleasure that I welcome to their ranks the incredible Nurikabe World. - John Walker Read More

Yesterday was awful for people who work at Microsoft and the gaming industry in general. Thousands at the company either saw colleagues laid off or were laid off themselves, while outside observers watched as more game developers and projects were put on the chopping block. Microsoft’s $80 billion bet on AI was reportedly part of the rationale for the cuts. So it was a particularly bad time to be excitedly inviting people to an upcoming roundtable on how AI can make game development more efficient. - Ethan Gach Read More