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Judge Throws Out $11 Million Award to Madden‘s Original Programmer

A federal judge threw out a jury’s award of $11 million to the programmer of the original John Madden Football, saying there was no evidence Electronic Arts copied his work for use in future editions of the game without paying royalties to which he would be entitled. Attorneys for Robin Antonick, the programmer, told the…

Today, apparently, is Opposite Day. OK. XCOM is celebrating by giving you cover art featuring those bastard-ass traitors EXALT from XCOM: Enemy Within. Don’t download it here.

The Speakys have spoken, and it’s a unified Game of the Year championship belt for The Last of Us—Game of the Year (Kotaku), Game of the Year (Kotaku readers’ choice) and now Game of the Year (Speakys/Kotaku Talk Amongst Yourselves).

The Water Temple Doesn’t Seem Difficult In These Ocarina of Time Maps

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is the favorite of many, and a classic like this deserves maps with similar qualities. Peardian, a veteran user of VGMaps, decided to map the whole game in an amazing-looking isometric view. According to VGMaps, he had to render the maps twice, both from top and side view,…

The Best of Kotaku, The Week of January 20

If you’re still trying to avoid the cold at all costs like I am, head over to Kotaku Selects to browse our best articles from this week with a nice cup of hot chocolate. Mmm milk. Mmm Kotaku. Or OR…you can ponder Sonic’s midlife crisis thanks to Jeremy Kaye‘s imagining in the comic above. Thanks…

​Tomb Raider On PS4 Is More ‘Definitive’ Than On Xbox One

And both versions look better than the PC version. For the most part, I really liked last year’s reboot ofTomb Raider. As time has gone on, my feelings about it have only increased, both for the stuff I liked—A main character with a real arc! Nods to my favorite horror movie! A sick bow!—and the…

The Pokémon Mash-Up Of My Dreams

“Nintendo should make a Pokémon MMO” is usually the suggestion people like to default to when coming up with ideas for what Nintendo should do with the Pokémon franchise. But, to me at least, that’s not nearly as awesome of an an idea as a potential Pokémon x Animal Crossing game is. Think about it!…

Here’s How To Play DayZ In Minecraft

The Minecraft DayZ mod is pretty ambitious, attempting to recreate most of the mechanics of its namesake within Minecraft. Here’s how to try it out yourself. You can watch the video above for a peek at the game itself, but if you want to try it out, it’s pretty easy. There are two ways to…

That Still Ain’t Right, YouTube

Back in December the YouTube ContentID fiasco was punctuated by a copyright claim against indie developer Terry Cavanagh on a trailer for his game VVVVVV. Cavanagh disputed the claim. Here’s YouTube’s resolution. Ridiculous on top of ridiculous with some ridiculous on the side, via Twitter. At this point he should probably just give up, maybe…

Prison Architect Creators Respond To Our Prison Architect Critique

The developers of Prison Architect have read our guest writer Paolo Pedercini’s tough critique of their game. They… liked it! And they’ve recorded a video addressing Pedercini’s concerns about how their game does or doesn’t bleed the reality of the real prison system into the game. There’s a lot in the video, including Introversion designer…

Why Seth Rogen Would Be A Worse AI Companion Than Scarlett Johansson

In Spike Jonze’s film “Her,” anyone can buy operating systems that come equipped with artificial intelligence—and this AI is usually so amicable that it’s not uncommon for people to fall in love with their AIs. But if an AI developed the personality of Seth Rogen, like in this video by Paul Gale Comedy? It would…

A million copies in five weeks. That’s what the PS3 version of Minecraft has sold since debuting on Sony’s home console

There Really Is Nothing More Beautiful Than Cars Crashing In Slow-Mo

Here’s a video game fact for you: crashing into virtual cars never gets old; from Destruction Derby on PlayStation to Burnout I’ve always loved smashing into cars. Next Car Game may not even have an actual title yet, but damn is smashing up cars into a pulp a beautiful experience. Which is made ever so…

Sony Online Entertainment Shuts Down Four MMOs

Citing the need to refocus its resources in other areas, Sony Online Entertainment today announced the impending closure of four massively mutiplayer online games — Free Realms, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Wizardry Online In a statement sent to Kotaku this afternoon, Sony Online Entertainment’s senior director of global communications,…

South Park Creators: ‘I Hope We Don’t Get A F***Ing Four On GameSpot’

The creators of South Park look tired, which makes sense, because they’ve been working on their game for what seems like forever. You can watch them talk a little bit about South Park: The Stick of Truth (out March 4 for 360/PS3/PC) in this short behind-the-scenes video, which is worth watching, because anything with Trey…

​Do You Care About Resolution And Frame Rate In Games?

Lately the internet has mustered a plethora of opinions on whether anyone should care about the finer technical details of a game. How much does screen resolution really matter? Is frame rate the end-all be-all? Some of us at Kotaku have already made our opinions on the matter known—but I thought I’d ask you what…

Sexy Powerpuff Girls Cover Gets Pulled For Being Too Controversial

Bubbles! Blossom! Buttercup! …what are y’all wearing? At least, that’s what some of the internet found itself asking about this Cartoon Network commissioned Powerpuff Girls comic cover: The cover caused the owner of a comics retailer, Dennis Barger Jr, to take to Facebook a few days ago and ask “Are we seriously sexualizing pre-teen girls…

This is the definitive Tomb Raider launch trailer. Forgot all those other Tomb Raider launch trailers. They did not count. This one, for next week’s Xbox One and PlayStation 4 Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, is the one to watch.

The One Feature All Modern JRPGs Should Have

There is perhaps no feature more reviled in gaming than the one this column is named after: gamers, as a general rule, hate random encounters. Take Stephen Totilo, for example. The other day I was showing Kotaku‘s fearless leader a little bit of Bravely Default, the upcoming 3DS game that is best described as “what…

The NHL Gets An Official Angry Birds Mascot. Of Course It Does.

While the rest of the Angry Birds spend their days desperately trying to recover their stolen young from their piggy adversaries, one has apparently decided he’d rather skip off to North America to play ice hockey. NHL HockeyBird is a bit of a dick. I’m sure his devil-may-care attitude will play well in NHL Stadium…