Steam Records Six Million People Logged In At Once

If ever proof was needed of the strength of PC gaming circa 2012, and in particular the appeal of Valve’s Steam service, look no further than this: over the weekend, over six million people were playing PC games on Steam. Sure, there’s a big sale on, so people are buying games like there’s no tomorrow,…

Minecraft App Brings Your Blocky Creations Into The Real World

Mojang’s annual Minecon, a gathering for fans of its Minecraft game, was held over the weekend at… Disneyland Paris. While the majority of updates coming out of the event were incremental and aimed at hardcore users, one thing should be of interest to a wider audience. It’s called Minecraft Reality, and it’s an iOS augmented…

This Might Be The Stupidest Kickstarter Of All Time

British Elite fan Drew Wagar has fired up a Kickstarter pledge to help him… afford to back someone else’s Kickstarter pledge. Saying that he’s an “an enormous fan of Elite“, Wagar—a published author—wants to be able to spend £4,500 in order to support David Braben’s Elite: Dangerous campaign, reaching a tier that would allow him…

The Rise of the Glorious Master Race of PC Gamers

Sometimes used as with pride, sometimes used with derision, the term “master race” has become a common one to describe those PC gamers who love to Lord it over the plebs, revelling in their glowing hardware and hi-res textures. Something captured almost perfectly—right down to the Gabe Newell cameo—in this amazing image by artist Saejin…

BioShock Infinite Won’t Have Multiplayer

Back in August, we told you that we’d heard BioShock Infinite was having problems with its multiplayer, a feature that hadn’t actually been publicly announced. They’re problems that, come November, seem insurmountable. Series boss Ken Levine has told Twitter followers that the game won’t be shipping with multiplayer. No multiplayer at all. You can read…

DJ Cutman has turned the Wii U’s soothing menu music into an album. Get it here

The Week in Games: Blank Friday

For the rest of the year, the major release calendar is looking at Far Cry 3 on Dec. 4 and Hawken on Dec. 12, which means this week—the Tuesday after Black Friday—is looking at very little in the way of new releases. Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault is the big name leading the lineup.…

College Basketball is Officially Dead to Video Games

For years, 2K Sports maintained server support for the final edition of its defunct series, like All-Pro Football 2K8, NHL 2K10, and, most importantly, College Hoops 2K8, where a robust user community was updating, re-rating and sharing rosters well into this year. It now appears online support for all of these titles was quietly pulled…

Someone’s selling this cardboard cutout of a Wii U gamepad for $10 grand. Act now before it’s removed. [h/t Norman H.]

The Games for All of Us

With respect and admiration for, if not apologies to, the late Ernie Harwell, here’s something adapted from his famous Induction Day speech at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Aug. 2, 1981, which itself was adapted from this 1955 essay Stick Jockey has published this annually on the weekend after Thanksgiving weekend. I’ve updated it…

If Dark Souls was an Arcade Cabinet …

Assuming three lives per quarter, you can die 720 times in Dark Souls before you’d have to spend more than its original retail price of $59.99. Yet, I think 720 deaths might be on the low side for most folks in this game. deviantART user semsei imagined Dark Souls as a 1980s arcade cabinet promo…

Wii U Marks ‘the End of an Era,’ Says Pong‘s Creator

Nolan Bushnell, the man behind Pong and Atari’s first home video game console, says he doesn’t get the attraction of the Wii U. “I actually am baffled by it,” he told The New York Times for a weekend feature. “I don’t think it’s going to be a big success.” What’s more, Bushnell doesn’t think the…

Madden Plants the Flag on the Wii U, but Doesn’t Gain Much Ground

At no point during its E3 2012 keynote did Electronic Arts mention what it would be delivering when the Wii U arrived later in the year. There could be any of number of good reasons for this, but a major publisher’s total silence on a new console was enough that I had to double-check with…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Bleak Friday

Father and son sharing a happy moment before purchasing the Wii U at a GameStop on Black Friday. Not pictured: Police barriers, trampled bodies. Here’s an image supplied to us by Nintendo of America, under the heading “Photos of Black Friday Shoppers Purchasing Must-Have Nintendo Products.” While their expressions don’t speak of combat-weary triumph seen…

You’ll Love and Tolerate the S*** Out of This World of Tanks Mod

The Brony Reconquista claimed another significant beachhead with this mod for Wargaming.net’s World of Tanks. The mod is 5GB large, stuffed with glitter and rainbows and throat-gagging irony. See for yourself in the video above. Following mods for Minecraft and other games, this one perverts WoT with more than 90 audio tracks, new pony-themed tank…

Sunday Comics: The Kitchen Sink

Welcome to your Sunday read of the week’s best in web comics. Make sure to click on the expand button in the bottom right to enlarge each comic. ActionTrip by Borislav Grabovic and Ure Paul published Nov. 17.—Read more of ActionTrip Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich published Nov. 19.—Read more of Awkward Zombie Nerf NOW!!…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Spike This Award: The Winners

Samuel L. Jackson is the host of this year’s Video Game Awards, and even though the man has hosted it three times before, for some reason this glassy expression communicates everything I expect from a movie star handing out this particular trophy. So, we handed the publicity stills to you folks to see if you…

Ubisoft Boss Hopes the Next Console Generation Doesn’t Last As Long As This One

Many of us would consider a long console lifespan to be a good thing, but Yves Guillemot, the CEO at Ubisoft, says it’s bad for the industry. Bemoaning a “very long” transition to new hardware, Guillemot told Polygon that “we are used to changing machines every five years.” At the end of a hardware cycle,…

Japanese Groom Ritually Destroys Love Plus Save Data on His Wedding Day

One day in college, a friend of mine* was awakened by the distinctive sound of a man’s porn collection in a garbage bag hitting the bottom of an empty Dumpster (which was right next to my apartment.) “Ah, someone must have gotten a girlfriend,” my friend said. A similar act of purification, contrition, devotion, whatever,…

Major Nelson died. No, not that one, the other one.