WoW Hacker Group Mastermind Sentenced To Two Years In Chinese Prison

Late last week, in Zhejiang province’s Songyang county court, ten men were sentenced to prison terms of up to two years. These men didn’t commit super heinous crimes, but they did commit a terrible one: they were found guilty of hacking and defrauding over 10,000 World of WarCraft accounts. The sentence hearing and the results…

93-Year-Old Chinese Man Poses Nude For Art

Ninety-three year-old Li is more than meets the eye. Li has worked a myriad of jobs, from making rat poison to collecting garbage, also volunteering for the army. But now, Li’s famous for his latest job: working as a semi-nude model. First appearing on Chinese image board TTmop, Li’s story is an interesting one. Originally…

4.7 Million Stolen Passwords, Turned Into Fancy Books

Forgot Your Password? is an eight-volume set of light reading by artist Aram Bartholl. Inside those eight volumes you’ll find every single Linkedin password that was stolen then leaked online last year. All 4.7 million of them. Not that Aram stole them. They were just easy enough to find that he found them and had…

Track: Godzilla | Album: Godzilla (EP) | Artist: Fu Manchu Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to – and gaming to – at the moment.

There Are Special Effects Artists In Video Games Too, You Know

In the movie business, there are artists who design things, then there are special effects artists who blow them up, light them and get them wet. It’s no different for video games. While this feature usually promotes concept art – it’s very pretty, after all – it’d be unfair not to also acknowledge the tireless…

A Very NSFW Xbox One Christmas

Reader Andy thought he was performing a pretty typical search on his Xbox One. It’s the holiday season, so he wanted to search for some Christmas music. He did not getwhat he was expecting. I’m picturing a very happy family, all gathered around the tree, some Bing Crosby playing softly in the background. Father says…

Auctions of eight Capcom Cup tournament edition fight sticks—awarded only to top finishers of the tournament last week—haveso far raised $18,000 for relief to the Phillippines in its recovery from Typhoon Haiyan. Four more auctions close tomorrow, and will raise at least $6,300 more.

Problem Gaming: When You Take Five iPads Into The Shower

“I hate my job,” George Yao told The New York Times. After moving across the country to a tiny apartment, to a city where he had no friends, he found an outlet in Clash of Clans. Then Yao found himself standing in the shower with five iPads—individually bagged—struggling to preserve his No. 1 ranking in…

Nine Years Later, Latin America’s Leagues Keep MVP Baseball Alive

We are nearing the 10-year anniversary of the licensing deal that killed MVP Baseball, yet still the game lives on—on PC, even—thanks to “MVP Caribe,” a celebration of Latin American baseball that just published its seventh “total conversion” mod. “MVP Caribe,” the work of a team of modders from across Latin America, replaces teams in…

Cops Say Man Broke Baby’s Leg When Diaper Change Interrupted His Game

A Florida man is in jail without bond after authorities say he broke a one-month-old child’s leg when he was interrupted from a video game to change the infant’s diaper. Paul Lejeunesse, 20, of Citrus County Fla. faces a charge of aggravated child abuse and, according to a report filed by child protection authorities, appears…

The Week in Games: PS4 Pinball and Spartan Assault

By God, we are going to wring every last new game out of this year if it’s the last thing we do. And sure enough there are a couple of digital releases worth a look this Christmas week. But the hay is in the barn for 2013, folks. That’s why the Steam Holiday Sale is…

Freedom Wars Makes You Work Off a Million-Year Sentence

I’ve been quite curious about Freedom Wars ever since I completely misjudged what sort of game it would be. So when I discovered that Sony had a playable demo booth set up at this year’s Jump Festa, I had to try it out. For the demo, I was treated to a tutorial video explaining the…

Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix released this new trailer at Jump Festa this weekend. It’s in Japanese, though that does mean you get to hear Goofy, Jiminy Cricket and Chip & Dale speaking in Japanese.

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: ‘Shop Talk

Let’s go ahead and give credit to reader JustWaitingForAMate for this idea. This week Luke wrote about Nintendo’s first electronic toy—a walkie-talkie from the mid-1960s. “Does this scream Kotaku photoshop contest to anyone else?” wrote JWFAM. Well, it did to me. Some folks already took to the comments of that post with ‘Shops of their…

NBA Live Gets Its First Patch, but Don’t Expect It to Change Much

NBA Live 14 showed a lot of problems at release a month ago—problems EA Sports vowed to fix through title updates. They rolled out the first patch for the game on Friday and, like everything else with this series for the past three years, it’s another promise this will be a good game at some…

Sunday Comics: It’s the Thought That Counts

Welcome to Kotaku‘s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best in video game webcomics. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon. Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik. Published Dec. 16. Read more of Penny Arcade Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published Dec. 16. Read more of Awkward Zombie…