This Game Sold 144 Copies and Was Pirated 50,000 Times

Gentlemen! is, in the words of its creator “a 2-player head-to-head Victorian dueling game for tablets.” There is no singleplayer mode and its multiplayer is local only. This wouldn’t figure to be an attractive piracy target, but the game’s features don’t seem to matter. In its first three weeks Gentlemen! was downloaded more than 50,000…

The Week in Games: Pigskin Picks

Lots of heavy hitters in the lineup this week, as Madden NFL 25 is joined by Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn and Lost Planet 3 on Tuesday. New Super Luigi U already is out today on Wii U and the Mac version of SimCity arrives Thursday. There’s more on the jump. Today • New…

Who Are the ‘Whales’ Driving Free-to-Play Gaming? You’d Be Surprised

Few words in the video games industry are as cynical as “whale,” taken from a Las Vegas term for a high stakes gambler. The difference is, a Vegas high roller may actually win something with his money, and at minimum is comped for everything during his stay. In free-to-play games, a whale is nothing but…

StarCraft World Championships: The final of the StarCraft II World Championship Series played today in Cologne, Germany. The winner is on the jump. Bomber, playing as Terrans, swept Jaedong, playing Zerg, 4-0. Bomber is third in the WCS points standings, whose top 16 will play in the Grand Final at Blizzcon in November.

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Unhappy Family

Another week, another chance for me to thwart sciteach by taking one of his pre-emptive strikes for the ‘Shop Contest splash image and declaring it ineligible from further competition. Y’all demanded Psyduck Kid last Sunday, and you wanted him followed by bickering Sims family. Well, you got it. I don’t know what the hell is…

Sunday Comics: Planned Obsolescence

Welcome to Kotaku‘s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics, chosen by our readership. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon in the lower right corner. Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published Aug. 20. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik. Published Aug.…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Psyduck Kid: The Winners

Last week a torches-and-pitchforks mob came to my door to demand Psyduck Kid and so I relented, sacrificing him to a horrible fate in order to preserve peace, or whatever passes for it, in our quiet community here. Of course, there will only be more victims, but today, we should celebrate the winners, beginning with…

Sony Acknowledges Grand Theft Auto V Leak, Says It’s Sorry

Sony has acknowledged—and apologized for—a leak of Grand Theft Auto V files yesterday that revealed the game’s main theme and its soundtrack, among other details., potentially. “We sincerely apologize to Rockstar and GTA fans across the world who were exposed to the spoiler content,” Sony said on the official PlayStation blog. Yesterday, a digital file…

Well, that didn’t take long. Remember that $90,000 Kickstarter to make a Metroid fan film—one that didn’t have Nintendo’s permission? Yeah, it ended about like you’d expect. They’d gotten about $20,000, with two weeks left in the fund drive.

Here’s One Super-Realistic Feature in Madden NFL 25

Madden NFL has a “fantasy draft” option—which disperses all of the players and has every team draft a new roster before beginning your career mode. If you pick that, here’s how the game’s fake Twitter stream reacts. Good to see that ESPN’s tinhorn orchestra, Skip Bayless, stays true to character in it.

PlayStation Exec Explains Why They Keep Taking Shots at Xbox One

Andrew House, the Sony top executive who took another swipe at Microsoft and the Xbox One from the stage at Gamescom, has explained why Sony has made such arch references to the competition at its showcase events. Basically, Microsoft made them do it. “We constructed our E3 presentation because there was somehow a suspicion that…

‘Same great gameplay.’ People were pissed that FIFA 13 on the PS Vita was essentially a reconditioned FIFA Soccer, the launch title for the device. Well, there’s more where that came from for FIFA 14, reports Eurogamer

Take a Guided Tour of the Xbox One’s Controller

If you’re picking up the Xbox One when it releases (whenever that is), this is the controller you’ll be spending a lot of time with. While we’ve posted our own impressions of its design, a video and this infographic, from Microsoft, should help you understand how it differs from the 360’s. In the video, Quintin…

Watch Some Dude Pull His Hamstring for a Copy of Madden

Down in Florida this week, EA Sports challenged people to run the NFL’s all-important 40-yard dash—traveled nearly 25 years ago by one Barry Sanders of Wichita, Kansas in 4.37 seconds—and offering copies of Madden NFL 25 to 100 winners. We hope the guy at 0:16 got one as a consolation prize. Sanders, this year’s cover…

See the StarCraft II World Championships Live Here, All Weekend

The world champion of StarCraft II will be crowned this weekend at Gamescom, and action is underway right now in the tournament’s group stage decider matches. You can watch all of the action right here. The World Championship Series Season 2 group stage deciders began at 10 a.m. and will wrap up soon, in time…

Second Kickstarter for Eternal Darkness Sequel Ends Far Short of Goal

Shadow of the Eternals, the proposed spiritual successor to 2002’s Eternal Darkness, fell well short of its Kickstarter funding goal for a second time. Despite a more modest target of $750,000, the project attracted less than half that amount, or $323,950. Shadow of the Eternals was to be made by Precursor Games, a studio formed…

This Week in the Business: When Ads Go Bad

What’s happened in the business of video games this past week … QUOTE | “They’re using words like amateur, crass, gross, disgusting … nothing that you’d want your brand associated with.”—A veteran game marketing executive describes the widespread negative response to Ouya’s ‘vomiting gamer’ ad QUOTE | “The handheld market, in terms of the media…

The Best of Kotaku, The Week of August 19

I’m on vacation, so I’m not really supposed to be here, but I figured you guys needed your weekly image courtesy of my Internet travels as well as all of our best content rounded up over at Kotaku Selects. So, go there. And stuff. This week’s image is brought to you by VectorBelly, who is…

In this, the year of Luigi: here’s this kind of bizarre, kind of funny fake ‘documentary’ by Nintendo about finding a parkour pro version of Luigi.

Aha, So THIS Is How You Get Toddlers To Stop Crying

It’s genius, what arfmoochikncheez has discovered. All he does to get his kid to stop throwing a tantrum is ask her to do something completely unrelated to what’s happening at the time, and boom! The tears are gone. Magic. Also, hilarious. Off-Topic is our nightly open thread where we show you something interesting beyond the…