Midas Mode Turns Dota 2 Tournament Into A Game Show

This weekend marks the start of Midas Mode, a unique kind of Dota 2 tournament that commodifies the game’s mechanics and makes professional Dota a Saturday morning game show. Two divisions, North America and Europe, with four teams each will play it out to determine a winner, with the teams donating their winnings to a…

Overwatch Pro’s Mid-Match Suspension Raises Questions About Blizzard’s Reporting System

Félix “xQc” Lengyel was playing a competitive Overwatch match last night when suddenly, he was booted from the game and informed his account had been banned or suspended—an action that’s sparked discussion over false reporting. Lengyel was mid-match when it occurred, leaving his teammates down a player after the punishment was placed on his account.…

We’re at Anime NYC! Kotaku reporters are out and about on the floor to mingle with fans, animators, voice actors and other convention food enthusiasts.

The Weekend In Esports: IEM’s Battlegrounds Invitational

2017’s breakout battle royale game comes to the Oracle Arena in Oakland for its first Intel Extreme Masters tournament. Even if PUBG is all some people ever seem to talk about though it’s not the only thing going on this weekend. The Rainbow Six Pro League will have its third season championship while top Dota…

This Week In The Business: A Disturbance In The Force

QUOTE | “Change will be a constant in Star Wars: Battlefront II” – The title of a blog post by DICE executive producer John Wasilczyk that went up on Monday, explaining that EA was reducing the cost of unlocking heroes in the game in response to feedback from upset fans QUOTE | “If we had…

The World of Pokémon Sun and Moon Is Kinda Bullshit

Playing through Ultra Pokémon Sun and Moon over the last couple of weeks gave me a chance to reconsider the major characters and story beats, and I’ve walked away believing one thing: the world of Alola failed Guzma. (Get the MP3 here.) In the latest episode of the Favecast, embedded above, Gita Jackson and I…

Shouldn’t your keyboard match your Gundam? Designed by Hidden Lab, the officially-licensed Gundam RX-78-2 double shot keyset is a stunning way to turn a keyboard into a Newtype (sorry). The $130 set is being offered as a group buy, shipping in May.

Giant Arenas Capture The Beautiful Chaos Of 100-Player Battlegrounds

This weekend, scores of players in Busan, South Korea, will compete in a LAN pulled from Ready, Player One’s wildest dreams. Stacked up in double-decker computer hubs, 100 competitors at a time will drop onto the abandoned island of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and scrap, shoot, and crawl until only one person is left standing at the…

I Love This Unrealistic Assassin’s Creed Origins Boat

I play a lot of video games, but I don’t see many great glitches. Say what you will about modern gaming’s abundance of patches, but major glitches are still fairly rare. I fall through the floor of a third-person action game maybe once every two years. I played all of Red Dead Redemption and never…

Skyrim VR Actually Made Me Throw Up, Yet I Want To Play More

Skyrim released today on Playstation VR. The VR version manages to capture the game’s scale and beauty in astounding new ways, but you might need to equip a barf bag alongside your ancient nordic axe. Leaping into Skyrim with a VR headset on feels a bit like placing an LSD sweetart under your tongue before…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for figuring out if you’re going to one of the Thanksgiving things you were invited to so you should go to the grocery store and buy something nice to cook, or if you’re going to avoid people because you never get to do that and so buy ice cream and call it…

Warcraft Fans Are Warring Over What WoW Classic Should Be

When World of Warcraft first came out, it meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Now that WoW Classic’s been announced, that’s become a problem—one that’s forced Blizzard to step in and pry people’s figurative hands off other people’s figurative throats. The central argument centers around how much current WoW…

Ghost Recon PvP Gets The Update It Sorely Needed

This week, Ubisoft gave Wildlands’ Ghost War mode a much-needed update, detailed the future of PvP, and doled out a harsh penalty for quitters. Ghost Recon: Wildlands’ free Ghost War PvP mode arrived in October as a promising tactical multiplayer experience hindered by long load times, ridiculous glitches, and lack of hype. The November 15…

Superflight Is Super Great, And Cheaper Than A Cup Of Coffee

Superflight is a simple game about a complicated action—wingsuit flight. You score points for almost touching obstacles. If you touch anything, it’s game over. The playground mountain levels are procedurally assembled. It’s beautiful and endlessly entertaining. I made a video about it. You can watch it here in this post—or on our YouTube channel! After…

Don’t Preorder Video Games Unless You’re An Alternate Dimension Pony-Person

In the first episode of Hasbro’s My Little Pony: Equestria Girls animated series, a pony who transformed into a human after passing through a dimensional portal waits in line for a new video game. What happens next challenges the notion that preordering video games is bad If you’re still stuck on the “pony transformed into…

Metroid Prime: The Kotaku Review

When she shoots, Samus Aran doesn’t miss. That’s one of the fundamental truths of the original Metroid Prime, the first-person sci-fi game that came out on the Nintendo GameCube in 2002. You lock her gun onto a target and fire. She hits it every time. (This post originally ran on March 10, 2016. We’re bumping…

Eleven-year-old Titan Quest just got a new expansion pack. Titan Quest Ragnarok, available now on Steam for $14.99, is a Norse-themed expansion for last year’s anniversary edition of the classic action RPG, adding a new story chapter, the Runemaster mastery class, weapons, items and more.