Team Fortress 2‘s Gray Mann Surfaces as Signs Point to All-Robot Faction [Update]

Diehard Team Fortress 2 fans have spent all weekend sleuthing out Friday’s tease, in which a “Gray Mann” is revealed to be the brother of Redmond and Blutarch Mann, owners of the game’s RED and BLU teams. Tons of evidence suggest this is going to mean the introduction of a robot faction, which Valve itself…

Talk Amongst Yourselves is where you should go to talk about video games. And life. And seasoned curly fries.

Someone’s Trying to Sell an “XBOX Durango Development Kit” on eBay [Update]

An eBay seller is attempting to offload what they’re calling a “Microsoft XBOX Durango Development Kit”. At time of posting, a bid of $425 will get you out front with a chance to buy it. Interestingly, the seller’s name is “superdae”, which matches the handle of the person who, last week, was claiming to have…

Crowning King Gary: The Winners

Decked out in plate mail fashioned from Nintendo 64 consoles and cartridges, Gary, King of the N64, certainly looked regal at Otakon 2012. His background, however, seemed kind of stale and bland. We handed Gary over to our smart ‘shoppers to put him in more heroic, noble or leaderly circumstances, and we’ve got this week’s…

All-Star Athlete Rehabs Knee by Using a Leg Press as a Video Game Controller

Wiihabilitation is so 2008 and, yes, Adrian Peterson of the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings is doing some of that as he tries to come back from a devastating injury in American football—the torn anterior cruciate ligament. But what’s more interesting here is Peterson has a custom set of exergames to go along with ski jumping on…

Fake Gun, Fake Currency, Real Jail Time Figure in Alleged Runescape Robbery [Corrected]

A 19-year-old Fordham University student is looking at 15 years in the slammer after allegedly putting a BB gun to the head of a classmate Fordham University student and demanding that 4.7 billion Runescape coins be transferred to his character, reports the New York Post [Correction] An earlier version of this story misidentified the suspect…

Zynga Tries to Prevent a ‘Mass Exodus’ with More Stock Options

Zynga’s stock has gone down, and gone down hard, plunging to $2.95 a share since late July, a drop that spawned a shareholder lawsuit and gave a top executive the heave-ho. Sensing that some employees might follow him out the door willingly, Zynga took the unusual step of offering free stock to everyone, Bloomberg reports.…

Jet Set Radio arrives 9/18 on PSN, 9/19 on Xbox Live and Steam, and 10/16 for the Vita. Price is $9.99 for all versions.

Paul Steed, Artist on Wing Commander and Quake Series, Dies

Paul Steed, an artist whose video game career spanned design, publishing and even console development, died unexpectedly, according to The Jace Hall Show. Steed was perhaps best known for work on Wing Commander and Quake and also for controversies arising in his time ad id Software. Steed was most recently the executive creative director of…

Google’s Olympic Doodles: The Kotaku Sort-of Review

As the 2012 Olympics come to a conclusion this weekend, Google this week released four playable versions of its famous doodle, the company’s logo on its minimalist front page. The doodles today returned to static illustrations of Olympic events, apparently ending the series of games. So I figured I’d give them all a good playthrough…

This Week in the Business: ‘Social and Freemium is Not Where Gaming is Headed.’

What’s happened in the business of video games this past week … QUOTE | “Social and freemium is not where gaming is headed.”—Jack Tretton, head of SCEA, talking about Sony’s rough times and how the console business will be better than ever QUOTE | “Madden did not have the level of innovation that some of…

After Learning It Was Copied From Another Game, Dota 2 Gives a Mace the Axe

Some 25,000 players who had bought a community-created weapon within Dota 2 discovered a new item in their inventories after Valve learned it had been copied directly from the MMO Aion Valve brought this up on its Steam Workshop blog, probably because 25,000 people noticed they no longer had “Timebreaker,” a popular user-created mace that…

The Moneysaver: New Dogs and Old Tricks

Sleeping Dogs arrives on Tuesday along with Darksiders 2; the only considerations these two games are getting are bonus credits. NCAA Football 13 led the retail sales lists in July but not enough, and now is cut to $41. Those three plus more than 50 other deals, bonuses and savings await in this week’s Moneysaver…

The Best of Kotaku, This Week

Welcome to the Best of Kotaku, where I round up all of this week’s best content. My, my, Mario. You’re looking quite dapper. That look is really working for you. Big thanks to Adam Marton, aka chaos13, for coming up with it. And to Corey for finding it. Moving on to our Best Of content…

Job Opportunity: Unpaid Internship With Startup Superhero

This listing hit Craigslist in Raleigh, N.C. a week ago and immediately went to its best-of archive. As a former resident of North Carolina’s capital city, I can tell you that this guy is neither the hero we deserve, nor the one we need right now. I am preparing to make my debut as Raleigh’s…

Mulder, It’s Me

I don’t know why, but a ton of people I know on Twitter have been talking about and rewatching The X-Files. (Clarification: This phenomenon pre-dates rumors that Mulder and Scully had gotten together in real life (which have since been debunked?) though I’m sure that’s contributing lately.) I remembered from my time watching the show…

Will New Physics Make a Better Madden? Find Out When the Demo Hits Tuesday.

The Madden NFL 13 demo arrives on Aug. 14, two weeks before the game’s release, offering a rematch of last year’s NFC Championship Game, and a Seattle-Washington matchup that showcases Redskins quarterback (and NCAA Football 13 cover star) Robert Griffin III. Players will get a full game of four five-minute quarters will commentary from the…

Yesterday’s Blizzard Hack Makes This Guy Almost Eat His Battle.Net Authenticator

I had to watch this about four times just to be completely sure that Internet video game rage comedian Francis did not, in fact, eat his Blizzard keychain authenticator during this rant about yesterday’s breach of Battle.Net. Obviously, this video is loud and its language is NSFW. He’s fast. I don’t think Francis actually chewed…

I Think I Unlocked Nintendo’s Worst Achievement

I earned this commendation yesterday after playing the Nintendo 3DS’ built-in role-playing game, Find Mii. Let’s unpack this a bit, shall we? Nintendo, which isn’t big on Xbox-like Achievements, does have an Achievement-like system built into the 3DS. The 3DS’ achievements primarily reward users for networking their system to others’. You get commendations when your…

Did You Buy a Borked Silent Hill HD on Xbox 360? Here, Have Frogger on the PS2

Konami’s considerate decision not to patch the broken Xbox 360 version of the Silent Hill HD Collection (read: because it costs money) has led the publisher to offer a free game to those who complain (read: because it costs less money). You just have to send an email to Konami to get the offer, according…