World of Warcraft‘s ‘Running of the Gnomes’ Fan Event Gets Official Blizzard Makeover

Since 2010, World of Warcraft players have been creating hordes of pink-haired level one gnomes and running them across Azeroth to support the fight against breast cancer. This year Blizzard is giving the event a boost with special decorations, a cheering crowd and its own special quest. The tradition of running low-level gnomes across a…

Paladins Free Open Beta Launches On Consoles

Hi-Rez Studio’s hero shooter caught some flak last year for looking and feeling a lot like Overwatch, but it’s still managed to maintain a healthy presence on Steam’smost-played games list. We’ll see if the trend continues as Paladins launches into free open beta on PS4 and Xbox One. The closed beta is over, and now…

Poor Mario Kart 8 Player Gets Forced Out of First In Worst Way

To play Mario Kart is to suffer, especially if you’re in first. Sometimes, though, the Mario Kart doesn’t just take the crown away—it also makes you regret picking up the controller at all. Twitch streamer PREYINGSHARK recently shared an agonizing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe clip where Daisy loses the lead, only to get hit by…

GTA Online’s Store Clerks Have Disappeared And Nobody Knows Why [Update: They’re Back]

Update 1:50 PM: Store clerk NPCs are now being reported as back across all platforms, though there is still no explanation as to why they were gone. Original story as follows: GTA Online players noticed something odd yesterday: all of the convenience store and liquor store cashiers are now gone. 12 hours later, these characters…

Eve Online Scams Aren’t Just Legal, They’re Encouraged

Every MMO has its scammers. But in EVE Online, their scams are allowed. Getting ripped off is all just part of the fun. Scams have existed almost as long as MMO games they take place in, with unscrupulous players trying all manner of trickery to wrest other players’ hard-earned in-game currency away from them. Usually,…

Futuristic Racer Extreme-G 2 Is Back And It’s Not Pretty

Acclaim’s Extreme-G 2 wasn’t an exceptional futurist racing game, but I carry many fond memories of the 1998 Nintendo 64 release. Or I did, until Throwback Entertainment’s Steam re-release broke them. Now Extreme-G 2 is a pretty old game, and this is just a port and not some fancy retro remake, but it’sa pretty atrocious…

Horizon Zero Dawn Patch Will Make Photo Mode Even Better

Horizon Zero Dawn already has one of the most robust photo modes out there, but a patch landing next week is going to expand on its functionality even more. According to the PlayStation blog, Horizon’s patch 1.20 will add more poses, facial expressions, and filters, among other things, to photo mode. Here are the rest…

In Osaka, Pay Money To Smash Plates And Relieve Stress 

If you visit Osaka, there are many things to do: shopping, eating, and sightseeing. These are all rather typical. Know what isn’t? A shop were you can smash plates to relieve stress. Located in Osaka’s Namba, Piat Thor is a unique establishment, outfitted with little booths were visitors can enter and chuck plates at a…

If You Are Going To Play Dragon Ball VR, Please Cosplay Like Vegeta

Because cosplaying as Vegeta makesDragon Ball VR much better. Here is comedian R Fujimoto, whose schtick is that he dresses as Vegeta, playing the Dragon Ball VR game while he’s dressed as…well The result looks awesome. Know what else looks awesome dressed as Vegeta? Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you…

Good Morning Mt. Fuji. Fujikawaguchiko, Yamanashi. By Andrew Holman.　 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! 

Stay Classy, Anchorman Cosplay

ronburgundy3 nailed pretty much everything for this shot, which was taken at Kansas City’s Planet Comicon last month. Photo by Eugene Photography

Haha Here’s The Witcher 3 Running In 8K Haha

This is footage of The Witcher 3 running 60fps at 8k resolution. That’s 7680 x 4320. On max settings. Gulp. If you need to know what kind of monster could run the game like this, here’s how Thirty IR got the footage across two PCs, the first for playing, the second for capture: GPUs: 4x…

Valve Wants To Be More Transparent About How Busy Steam Customer Support Is

For years, Valve has faced heavy criticism over lackluster customer service efforts. On the upside, they’ve confessed that they need to improve, and things are definitely better than they were in Peak Badness Year 2015. But there’s still a long way to go. The next step? Making customer support data public. Valve has launched a…

Tell ‘Em, Sailor Moon

Iris Muddy is a freelance concept artist and illustrator based in France who has worked for companies like Hasbro and Massive Black. You can see more of Iris’ work at her ArtStation page To see the images in their native resolution, click on the “expand” button in the top-left corner. Fine Art is a celebration…

Guy Turns His Zelda: Breath of the Wild Photos Into A Book

You can take a lot of nice photos in Breath of the Wild, but really, what can you do with them? Share them with friends, I guess, but they don’t really care, they’ve seen your horse 100 times before. NV/Haru had a better idea: turn them into a book. It’s not big, it’s not glossy…

The Best Xbox Games

It’s hard to believe given its place in history, but the original Xbox was only really around for four years. That’s not long in console terms, but as we all found, when it came to Microsoft’s first console the focus was on quality, not quantity. Leveraging the console’s horsepower, hard drive and online capabilities, the…

Gnog Is A New Puzzle Game About Up Opening Beautiful Boxes

Released today on PlayStation 4 and coming soon to PC and iOS, Gnog is a musical adventure through a series of diorama puzzle boxes filled with wondrous creatures, strange contraptions and gorgeous music. Let me show you how it works. First we’re given a box. Something like this: Turning the box around, we’re presented with…

Overwatch Pro Sets Up Surprise Attack By Balancing Winston On A Roof

There are plenty of “correct” ways to play Winston. Dive into the back line, tear up a healer, throw down a shield, etc. LuxuryWatch Blue player Song “Janus” Jun-hwa’s strategy was not “correct.” That did not, however, stop it from being effective. In a recent APEX season three match against CB Spirit, Janus jumped onto…

Tumbleseed Is An Adventure You Tilt Your Character Through

TumbleSeed is a game where you guide your character forward on a seesaw-esque swing on a journey to scale a hazardous mountain. We play the first twenty minutes in this Kotaku Plays. TumbleSeed has two sides. On the one hand, it offers a friendly world of cute monster pals and relaxing music. On the other,…

This Fan’s Incredible Amiibo Display Case Is Probably Better Than Yours

Amiibo may look like Smash Bros. trophies, but they don’t act like them—not normally, anyway. One fan has spent two years trying to make that fantasy into more of a reality, and the results are awesome. CaliburLord K uploaded a video showcasing an elaborate Amiibo display that not only lights up, it can tell different…