The Complicated, Messy Future Of Esports

It’s hard to recognize a tipping-point until it’s come and gone. This year, like every other year since 2011 or 2012, esports are poised to break through into the mainstream. But with companies like Turner set to broadcast a Counter-Strike league on TBS (the unfortunately-named ELEAGUE), and ESPN getting into esports coverage, esports have already…

Comparing How “Strategic” Strategy Games Actually Are

Strategy games can be exciting. They can be…strategic. They can be easy, they can be hard. You might not have ever wanted to see some of the biggest games in the genre compared across these metrics—I’d never thought of it—but seeing them mapped out is pretty interesting! Yes, this is one of those infographics-fronting-as-advertisement kinda…

Nintendo Removes Controversial Scene From English Version Of Fire Emblem Fates

When Fire Emblem Fates launched in Japan last year, there was controversy over a scene that was perceived as homophobic. Nintendo says that part won’t be in the English version. The aforementioned scene sees the player character (you) use a “magic powder” to make Soleil, a woman who’s into women, like men. Or rather, it…

How Sony Stopped A Vita Port From Being Canned

Stoic Games is a tiny developer. While their Viking-inspired strategy game The Banner Saga became a hit, they didn’t have the bandwidth to port it themselves, so they found another studio to handle the game coming to PS4, Xbox One, and Vita. Unfortunately, that studio went bankrupt. Back in December, Stoic technical director John Watson…

Counter-Strike Team Quits After Allegedly Being Asked To Throw Matches

Valve recently made itself abundantly clear in matters of Counter-Strike match fixing: if you’re involved in a thrown match, you’re banned from Valve-sponsored events for life. One team claims they were asked by their owner to do it anyway. So they quit. The team—now known as “Orgless”—was briefly under the financial wing of CSGO.one, a…

Ark: Survival Evolved On Xbox One: Looks Awful, Runs Terribly, Still Fun

A couple of days ago, technical experts confirmed that the Xbox One version of Ark: Survival Evolved runs like ass. The report came fromEurogamer’s Digital Foundry columnists, who recorded a video of the early access (aka unfinished) survival game and found the Xbox One version desperately wanting. You can watch that videohere, but I’ll summarize.…

Necropolis—Harebrained Schemes’ roguelike dungeon-crawler with the cool abstracted art style—will be hitting Steam on March 17. There’s going to be four-player co-op, too, so maybe you’ll all live a little longer. Contact the author at [email protected]

Westport Independent Is An Intense Game About Censoring The News

The name’s Narcisse. Yeah, numbnuts, I’ve heard all the jokes. I’m a newspaperman. No matter how hard I try every night, I can’t scrub the newsprint off my palms. Problem is, the bastard politicians running Westport are threatening to add bloodstains to all that ink. Out today from indie studio Double Zero One Zero for…

Mortal Kombat X’s PC Players Are Getting the Shaft

Mortal Kombat X was’t very good on the PC. While not the outright disaster that Batman: Arkham Knight was, it was still plagued with technical problems. A community still formed around the fighting sequel, but Warner Bros. and NetherRealm are cutting ties with PC players; there will be no more DLC for it. The PC…

What It’s Like To Work On A Massive Ubisoft Game

At Ubisoft, big video games like Assassin’s Creed are developed by hundreds of people at many different studios across the world. As you might imagine, this can be an organizational nightmare. Former Ubisoft technical architect Maxime Beaudoin, who quit the company late last year to work on indie games, wrote a candid blog post today…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Final Fashiony

Inspired by both Louis Vuitton’s choice of virtual model and Venture Beat’s excellent response, this week’s ‘Shop Contest is too sexy for your games. The objective is simple. Take a video game character, turn them into a fashion model. It doesn’t have to be something high concept and high price like Louis Vuitton or Venture…

One-Punch Man’s Most Memorable Battle, Remade In Fallout 4

Fallout 4’s protagonist is transformed into Saitama, while a regular Deathclaw got a unique skin and is now posing as Lord Boros, leader of the alien invader group Dark Matter Thieves. EzPlays remade the memorable encounter (including the “OK” scene) we’ve seen in the last three episodes of the anime and those are some proper…