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American Team Wins Dota 2 International, Takes Home $6.6 Million

The U.S. team Evil Geniuses won on Dota 2’s biggest stage last night, earning a $6.6 million prize and becoming the first American squad to win the International tournament. Evil Geniuses defeated the Chinese team CDEC, generally considered to be an underdog, 3-1 in the best-of-five Grand Finals late Saturday night, capping off a week…

The Dota 2 International final round is happening tonight—you can watch it live right here. It’s the U.S. team Evil Geniuses against China’s CDEC Gaming. If EG takes it, they’ll be the first North American team to win a Dota 2 International. U S A!

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Virtual Reality

You knew this was inevitable. Let’s see if you guys can improve TIME’s fantastic August 17 cover, which features Oculus Rift CEO Palmer Luckey prancing like he’s never pranced before. Competition will be tough for this one, given how many people have already been ‘shopping it up since the cover came out earlier this week.…

Blizzard Is Quietly Making Huge Changes To StarCraft II

Did you know that Blizzard is playing around with totally removing the major macro mechanics from StarCraft II? And that future multiplayer matches might no longer feature Chrono Boost, MULEs, or manual Larva Spawn? Since StarCraft II first came out way back in 2010, all three races have had specific macro abilities that players have…

Here Is What Happens Every Time I Try To Play The Witcher 3

Let me tell you a story in pictures. That’s essentially what’s happened every time I’ve tried to play The Witcher 3 over the past month. I start the game, all excited to continue hunting for Ciri, then I open up my list of quests and just freeze, scrolling down for a few minutes before I…

Check Out This Sweet Suikoden II Collage

I’m running Kotaku this weekend, which means there’s nobody around to stop me from posting only about Suikoden II for 48 hours straight. Heh heh heh. Back in January, Kotaku reader and artist Benjamin Schwarz sent me this collage of Suikoden II characters that he made a few years ago. This sluggish August weekend feels…

Metacritic Matters: How Review Scores Hurt Video Games

Bugs in Fallout: New Vegas might have eaten your save file. Maybe they took away a few hours of progress, or forced you to reset a couple of quests. Maybe game-crashing bugs pissed you off to the point where you wished you could get your $60 back. But they probably didn’t cost you a million…

Blizzard is streaming new stuff from Overwatch and StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void today. You can watch the stream on YouTube here. We’ll be keeping an eye out and will let you know if there are any cool announcements, as always.

Hi Kotaku — I’m Jason Schreier and I’ll be your guest weekend editor, running this big ol’ ship while Fahey’s on sabbatical. You may recognize me from such websites as Kotaku.

This Week In The Business: Giant Metal Moon Boots

QUOTE | “If Gears was realistic you wouldn’t be running around in giant metal moon boots right?” – The Coalition head Rod Fergusson, talking about getting a new team up to speed on Gears of War as they remake the original and prepare Gears of War 4 QUOTE | “Easy – my brother Jared and…

Watch Me Try Splatoon’s New Stuff, Live [Done!]

The big August update is here! Hell, Splatfest is (almost) here! Let’s experience it together, shall we? I’ll be livestreaming some matches of Splatoon for your viewing pleasure starting around 5:35 PST. If you’ll join me on Twitch, I’d love to chat about pretty much anything—be it Splatoon, other games, or life in general. And…

Star Citizen Shows New Demos, Some Cool, Some Not

Today Chris Roberts showed off three portions of his space game to be/end all space games, Star Citizen. Portions of the demo were definitely impressive, but the game’s still got a ways to go. You can view the entire obscenely lengthy presentation—complete with a cosplay showcase and a raffle to win Chris Roberts’ jacket for…

A Book That Tries to Explain Why Some People Die Playing Video Games

I own a lot of books about video games. I paid almost $125 for a used copy of Invasion of the Space Invaders, Martin Amis’s out-of-print confessional/tips-and-tricks book about the arcade age. I recently bought another out-of-print book from the 1980s, David Sudnow’s Pilgrim in the Microworld, which is a fascinating account of a pianist’s…

New Witcher 3 Patch Fixes Accidentally Armorless Geralt

Along with the many small improvements offered by The Witcher 3’s most recent big patch, at least one problem slipped in: It was possible for Geralt to wind up stranded in the wilderness without a shred of armor to wear. See, the 1.07 patch raised the level requirements for some of the game’s gear. That…

The Story Behind Mighty No. 9‘s Shady Delay

Mighty No. 9, an upcoming video game about a blue robot who fights against evil robot masters and collects their powers, was recently delayed until next year. This would not be an issue—video games get delayed!—if everything around it wasn’t so damn shady. Take, for example, the timeline. On Thursday, July 23, retail listings for…

One Man’s Defense of The Order: 1886

Tom Bissell is the author of my favorite book on video games, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, which I called “the finest account yet of what it feels like to be a video game player” when I reviewed it in The New York Times. These days, he is a writer for video games like…

StarCraft’s Medic Is Joining Heroes Of The Storm

It’s seemed like as natural a fit as there possibly could be, but Heroes of the Storm fans haven’t known for sure if Blizzard was going to transform the Terran Medic unit from StarCraft into a full-fledged MOBA character. Now, they do. Blizzard revealed the Medic as the latest confirmed character addition for HOTS today…

How Endless Respawns Can Make Death In Games Feel Meaningless 

As the week nears its conclusion, it’s time for another installment in Worth Reading, our regular roundup of the best video game writing from the last week or so. Hey, You Should Read These “On the much hated and woefully overlooked codec radio” by Stephen Beirne I have such mixed emotions about Metal Gear Solid—I’m…

Microsoft has clarified that cross-buy functionality for games on both Windows 10 and Xbox One only applies to limited DLC options and not full games. Go here to read the full statement. Contact the author at [email protected]

Fans were pissed this week when Blizzard announced a Protoss Warrior for Heroes of the Storm that WASN’T the StarCraft hero Praetor Fenix. A HOTS developer has now weighed in on Reddit to say they are working on him, they’re just holding him back because he has a similar resurrection mechanic to King Leoric. Phew!