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Magic: The Gathering—Tactics will be taken offline on March 28, says Sony Online Entertainment. Card packs for the game, which launched in 2011, will no longer be available after Nov. 18. There’s more about the shutdown in this FAQ.

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: BatDad: Arkham Origins

Didn’t really spy anything super-useful this week so we’ll have to go with a bit of a wild card. Everyone’s familiar with BatDad, right? Well, Arkham Origins releasing on Friday provides the opportunity for a timely and ridiculous mash-up. To the ‘Shop-poles! For those not in the know, BatDad is Blake Wilson of Atlanta, well…

The studio behind Dark Matter, criticized by many as an incomplete game released on Steam earlier this week, has given a statement on the matter. While “it is simply not true that the game is unfinished,” InterWave Studios acknowledged its ending “may cause confusion and is not satisfactory.” They’re working on a fix.

Arnold Schwarzenegger Re-Records His Most Famous Lines for Fans

Yesterday in a Reddit AMA, Col. Matrix took requests to repeat his most iconic lines of the past three decades. Among them: Predator (above), Conan the Barbarian (but not the prayer to Crom) Kindergarten Cop and, of course, The Terminator. How in the hell did nothing from Commando make it? Here are all the videos.…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: I Thee Choose: The Winners

Last week’s challenge was to do something tasteful with a proposal at the gala launch event for Pokémon X and Y. Many of you were able to pull that off. (Many others were not.) Most of the finalists were … subtle, so look closely, but overall No. 1 halfbeast definitely hits you like an axe.…

Politician Out to Scare Parents Makes a Great Pitch for GTA Instead

I don’t know where to begin with this, but it’s hilarious. The state’s attorney for a southern Chicago suburb on Thursday gathered middle school parents to urge an “economic boycott” of Grand Theft Auto, which has already made, like, a billion dollars. It sounds like a scared-straight lecture straight out of 1958. The assembly took…

Indie Studio Says Failed Kickstarter is Why Its Game Looks Incomplete [Update]

A jolting conclusion awaits anyone who bought Dark Matter, an indie game released two days ago on Steam. About four hours in, gamers were abruptly slapped with a wall of text signifying the end of the game. The game’s maker says the hard stop is because the studio’s Kickstarter failed and they ran out of…

Xbox Live Survey: Three Percent of Users Don’t Approve of Free Games?

When it was announced back at E3, the free-games-for-paid-subscribers deal called Games With Gold was supposed to last only until the Xbox One’s launch. Well, now it is officially continued as an “ongoing benefit.” That’s not what caught my eye about the announcement, however. “According to recent surveys, 97 percent of participating members have given…

Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of Super Smash Bros., just posted this image to the game’s Miiverse feed; it was then published to its official page. Those antlers belong to Xerneas, The 16-point Pokébuck who debuted in Pokémon X (and on its cover) last week, so look for him to appear in the game in some…

Grading NBA Live‘s Trailer, in the Shadow of NBA 2K14‘s

Maybe people aren’t cooing over it the way they are the NBA 2K14 hype reel released Thursday, but NBA Live 14‘s gameplay trailer does have its virtues. To reiterate, no video game genre more than sports suffers from the over-promises of a next console generation and the point of diminishing returns we’re reaching in recreating…

L.A. Suburb Forced to Sell $100,000 Arcade Game Collection

Among the assets owned by the city of Glendale, Calif. is a collection of classic arcade cabinets once valued at $100,000. However, the city is being forced to sell them all off and give all of the proceeds back to the state of California. How Glendale got into the arcade game collection business and why…

The Best of Kotaku, The Week of October 14

Happy weekend, Kotaku! Did you know we debuted a new feature this week? It’s called Last-Gen Heroes (and Zeroes) where, as we approach a new generation, the whole team looks back at the winners and losers of the last generation in gaming. We (and lots of you readers!) have already contributed a ton of good…

Marvel Heroes Is The Best Game Ever, Because Squirrel Girl

Ladies and gentlemen, Squirrel Girl is now live in Gazillion Entertainment’s free-to-play MMO, Marvel Heroes. As LEGO Marvel Super Heroes doesn’t come out until Tuesday and Super Hero Squad doesn’t count, Marvel Heroes is the first, and therefor best. Disclaimer: There’s probably something wrong with Fahey.

Looks Like Target Is Canceling PS4 Preorder Bundles For Delayed Games [UPDATE]

Watch Dogs and Driveclub, two high-profile games planned for release alongside the PS4 and Xbox One, have both seen fairly last-minute delays into next year. However, both of those games had been included in next-gen console preorder bundles. Two readers inform us that today, Target canceled not just their game preorder, but their console preorder…

Just What You Always Wanted, A Mountain Dew-Themed Xbox One

Do you feel that the Xbox One’s bold, clean design is just a little bit too austere? Ever wish it could be livened up by some shiny green soft-drink branding? Well then! The above photo was tweeted by the media rep for Hendrick Motorsports, who field Nascar driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr. She describes it as…

Metal Gear Solid Glitches Take Snake To Nightmaretown

Colonel! These nanomachines have me tripping! Heh, this Metal Gear Solid compilation of corruptions and glitches by Vinnie from Vinesauce had me rolling while watching—even though, yes, some of ’em could be something out of a nightmare. Seems like it would be hard to go stealth while playing this way, too…but then again, Snake seems…

Google Is Using Minecraft To Find The Computer Geniuses Of Tomorrow

If you want to find the computer geniuses of tomorrow, you could do worse than to check out which kids are playing Minecraft. That’s what Google’s thinking, anyway, with a new Minecraft mod that adds quantum behaviors to the game. In a new Google post, the Google Quantum A.I. Lab Team says that they’ve released…

What An Xbox One Achievement Looks Like

We knew that the way achievements work has changed…but did you know that they’ve also changed in terms of how they look? Here’s what getting an achievement on the Xbox One looks like in motion; GIF courtesy of Gearnuke. Microsoft has confirmed to Kotaku that these are in fact the new achievements. Here’s some slightly-obscured…

Next-Gen Football Looks Like This

I’m not really sure what to make of this new next-gen Madden 25 footage, released by EA today. It looks OK, but this isn’t exactly how I imagined “next-gen” gameplay would look. And it’s not nearly as mind-blowing as next-gen NBA 2k14. Doesn’t help that they’re just focusing on linemen, and we can’t actually see…

Your 6 Nominations For Best Gaming Keyboard

500 comments and more than 50 different keyboard nominations later, we have our contenders. In a surprising twist, there was a tie for 5th place, so we actually have six nominees rather than the usual five going into the voting round. Rules are pretty simple: read about each keyboard if you like, and then cast…