This Week In The Business: Do AAA Games Require Crunch?

QUOTE | “Rockstar is a good company to work for. When it’s not crunch, it’s not a bad place at all. The money’s alright, there’s a bonus at the end of the year. It’s just that crunch practically kills people.” – A former Rockstar Lincoln QA tester believes a good company to work for will,…

Being Naughty and Nice in Red Dead Redemption 2

In Red Dead Redemption 2, players can choose to be friendly or not-so-friendly with strangers. I decided to take numerous strolls down the main street of Valentine to take a look at the differences between those interactions and compare them. And then I made it into a vintage video that you can watch above. When…

“Self care. Especially as a person of color, because there’s not a lot of us out here. Again: most brown folks I’ve seen at TwitchCon in my two years of coming, in this room. We cannot burn out. We cannot burn each other out,” said streamer and I Need Diverse Games director Tanya DePass at…

TwitchCon is letting Friday badge holders come back on Saturday and opening more entry points to make up for how bad the lines were today. Crisscrossing lines wrapped around the convention center. I heard horror stories of people waiting in line for four hours. One made it to the front, only to find out they’d…

A Visit To TwitchCon’s Emote Museum

Some emotes have been used to cause significantly more trouble than others, but there’s no denying that they are a pillar of Twitch culture. As part of this year’s TwitchCon in San Jose, California, Twitch has enshrined them in a faux-museum display. To my knowledge, this is the first museum to ever require a meme…

In Defense Of Blocking People On Twitter

Due to the way Twitter works, blocking people is the only way to guarantee that you won’t see tweets from someone you don’t like. Everyone should do it more. Twitter’s safety measures are notoriously lackluster, but if someone’s in your mentions when you don’t want them to be, you have a couple of immediate options:…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for starting Red Dead Redemption 2 because you fell asleep before it launched last night, because you are an old man. I never played the first Red Dead because I didn’t own a console, but I always wanted to. I read about the game a whole lot—highfalutin academic papers weren’t quite the…

Excited Kids Are Baffling Adults With Their Fortnite Halloween Fervor

The Spirit Halloween store closest to Kotaku’s office is in a brightly lit basement. The walls are cement, and the interior of the store is a loose collection of temporary shelves. Every part of this store is crammed with costumes, either individual parts like wigs or facepaint, or entire outfits in a plastic container. As…

Announced during Twitchcon 2018 and going into testing later this year, Squad Streams allow teams of players to stream all at once, allowing viewers to switch between chats on the fly. Perfect for Fortnite teams and Rock Band groups, to name two equally popular 2018 things.

Early Access Means Nothing Anymore

Before PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds released, it had become a viral sensation on Twitch, sold 13 million copies and even got its own esports tournament complete with a $350,000 prize pool. It was in early access, a public, but incomplete version of the game sold to help publishers bankroll the game’s development and invite user feedback. It…

My Red Dead Redemption 2 Playthrough Has Already Gone Way Off The Rails

I’m about to go away for a week, vacationing far from my PS4. I’ve been trying to use the last few days to get the most out of the early copy of Red Dead Redemption 2. I think I’m doing it “wrong,” but having a great time along the way. Lately I’ve stopped advancing the…

One Of Dota 2’s Newest Teams Has A Lot To Prove This Weekend

In its first major tournament since the annual International in August, competitive Dota 2 returns this weekend with a $300,000 event in Hamburg, Germany. Though China’s Team Aster came out on top of the group stage with only one loss, it’s now hanging on for dear life in the lower bracket. The days and weeks…

A Terrifying Five-Minute Horror Game

InSeptember 1999, something is wrong. A lone house holds a secret, recorded on tape. You play through the tape as it jumps through a slow descent into gore and death. The whole game lasts five minutes and 30 seconds. You play through the perspective of someone with a camera who is reviewing recorded footage. It’s…

Tiny Torbjorn Action Figure Is Just The Right Size

Normally when the folks at Good Smile Company create one of their big-headed Nendoroid figures, a little downscaling is involved. Not so with Torbjorn. Overwatch’s resident dwarven engineer was bite-sized to begin with. He’s conveniently cute. That’s right, I called Torbjorn cute. I was afraid the tenth figure in GSC’s Overwatch Nendoroid line would turn…