Twitch Adds Loot Boxes With Temporary Emotes

Twitch has introduced loot crates for Halloween which offer temporary emotes. The crates offer random rewards, as well as a permanent reward for collecting the whole set. It’s weird. A Twitch blog post outlines a Halloween promotion in which players can spent “bits” to receive special loot crates. Bits are a digital currency bought with…

We’re streaming Assassin’s Creed Origins. Join us in virtual Egypt as we play on the PS4. We’ll be avoiding spoilers and just showing the basics.

Battleborn Updates Are Over, So It Can Die In Peace

Thefinal update for Gearbox’s failed hero shooter Battleborn arrived last week, tweaking game mechanics slightly, fixing a few bugs and adding some new skins and taunts before closing the door on continued development. It did not have a good run. Asannounced in September, the fall update for Battleborn is its last dose of new content.…

Opus Magnum Is A Delightfully Esoteric PC Game

Behold the marvelous science of alchemy, in which a modest molecule of lead, through careful programming of the transmutation engine, can be transformed into shimmering gold. All this and more is possible in Opus Magnum, a most elegant mechanical puzzle game from the maker of SpaceChem. From the production-line chemistry of SpaceChem to the electronics…

Hitman Will Get New Campaign, Return Of Elusive Targets

Hitman will get a Game of the Year Edition on November 7, IO announced today. It will bring a new campaign, new escalations, and a chance to try Elusive Targets you might have missed. It’s not Season Two, but it’s a ton of exciting new stuff. The new campaign, “Patient Zero,” will cross Sapienza, Bangkok,…

The Origin Of The Matrix‘s Code Explained

The Matrix movie title credits show falling green digital code. If you know Japanese, the katakana characters will look familiar, but where did this code actually come from? The man who created the title sequence recently revealed the source: His wife’s Japanese cook book.  While the falling code is clearly influenced by the Ghost in…

The Nintendo Switch Now Supports GameCube Controllers

The recent 4.00 Nintendo Switch update has a secret: It brings GameCube controller support to the Nintendo Switch. By connecting a GameCube controller via the Wii U adapter, the Switch console will now read it, allowing players to use the controller with seemingly any Switch game. Is it too early to start assuming that a…

Rocky. Cappadocia, Turkey. By Duncan Gidney. JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line! 

NeoGAF Reopens, Users Revolt

Following a weekend of strife that led to mass mod resignations and the forums going offline for days, popular gaming community NeoGAF has reopened this evening. And it’s a mess. Much of the turmoil has centered around an allegation of sexual misconduct against NeoGAF’s owner, Tyler “Evilore” Malka, who upon getting the site back online…

The Story Behind TwitchCon’s Giant Bob Ross

During this year’s TwitchCon, Twitch patron saint Bob Ross was watching over everyone, literally, in the form of a towering bead painting that took 24 people six months to assemble. That colossal Bob Ross is made of Perler Beads, which people assemble into images and then melt together with an iron. If all goes according…

FIFA 18’s Worst-Rated Player Isn’t Even A Pro Athlete

The lowest possible rating a FIFA 18 player can have is 46, and there are ten players plumbing these depths. Nine of them, like Grimsby Town’s Max Wright and Scunthorpe United’s Leslie Sackey, are professional athletes. The tenth is a former youth goalkeeper roped in to get around an administrative loophole. Tommy Käßemodel, listed in…

At TwitchCon, IRL Streamers Cause Problems By Streaming IRL

On Friday, the first night of TwitchCon 2017 in Long Beach, California, I was standing on a street corner, waiting for a stoplight to change. A roving pack of streamers walked up behind me. “Are you streaming right now?” one asked another. “Of course!” an IRL streamer replied. “If you’re here and you’re not streaming,…

Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Bridges

Today on Highlight Reel we have stunt jumps, Splatoon 2 plays, Evil Within 2 scares and much more! Watch the video then talk about your favorite highlight in the comments below. Be sure to check out, like, and share the original videos via the links below. Subscribe to Kotaku on YouTube for more! Catch up…

Nine Speedruns That Make Horror Games Way Less Terrifying

Horror games strike a balance between player control and dread. Getting chased by a murderer with giant scissors or dealing with legions of zombies is pretty scary. Thankfully, brave speedrunners are here to tackle them for us. Resident Evil Remake, Knife Only Resident Evil knife only runs are a good way of ruining your childhood.…

DreamHack’s Fighting Game Tournament Trophies Keep Breaking

After wrapping up its first Denver outing this weekend, the DreamHack tournament series awarded the champions of their various fighting game events with unique trophies that featured moving parts and the logo of each respective title. Unfortunately, these prizes soon began to fall apart. These problems were first brought to light on Sunday afternoon by…

Rockstar Explains Why GTA V Never Got Single-Player DLC

Players have clamored for single-player GTA V DLC since its release, and four years later, none has arrived. Often, fans rationalized that the success of GTA Online was too immense for Rockstar to develop single-player DLC, and that doom and gloom around single-player games has only deepened this year. Rockstar, however, says it is not…

Mercy’s Redesign Shows The Tug Of War Between Casual And Competitive Overwatch

In the past month, the healer Mercy in Overwatch has experienced an unprecedented boom in popularity across all competitive levels, especially in the highest tiers. The big spike in Mercy usage coincides with a massive overhaul of her abilities, courtesy of a patch implemented on September 19. These huge changes have sparked debate in the…