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Smash Bros. Survives Ban, Becomes Biggest Fighting Stream In History

It’s a good thing Nintendodidn’t follow through with its reported attempts to ban streams of Smash Bros. Melee from this year’s Evo fighting game tournament. Because it just became, for the time being at least, the biggest fighting game stream of all time. At its peak during the game’s finals held earlier today, over 130,000…

Custom Difficulty Gives an Honest Challenge—and Leaves Time to Rally

I move through the stages of difficulty in a sports video game like the stages of grief. Expert, Pro, Hard, Medium and Easy might as well be named Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. In the past, I’ve started somewhere between anger and depression before moving on to acceptance. A couple weeks ago, Forza Horizon‘s…

Happy 30th Birthday to Video Gaming’s Most Famous Brother

Today, according to Nintendo, is Luigi’s 30th birthday. The company says Mario Bros.—which introduced Mario’s taller sibling—was released July 14, 1983—a day before the Famicom console launched in Japan. Strangely enough, I have a vivid memory of this game’s debut. My family was on vacation in August 1983, going up the Eastern Seaboard. I actually…

Valve Opens ‘Pipeline’ to High Schoolers Interested in Making Games

Valve, makers of 2007’s Half Life 2: Episode 2, is reaching out to teenagers interested in games development through “Pipeline,” a program being administered by the company’s own interns. “[W]e are frequently asked questions by teenagers about the videogame industry,” Valve wrote on the project’s Web site. “‘What is it like to work on videogames?…

Moneysaver: Steam Summer Sale Day 4 Breakdown [Updated Monday 10:30am]

Dealvalanche. Steam Sale Day One | Steam Sale Day Two | Steam Sale Day Three | Current Moneysaver | GTAV PS3 Bundle | Vote for Monaco, and FEZ would be a repeat anyway, not that I don’t love me some FEZ. • Community Sale Left 4 Dead 2 ($5) | Repeat • Flash Sale PES…

The Life. Love. Game Design Challenge to increase awareness of teen dating violence has named its winners. The contest is run by Jennifer Ann’s Group, founded in memory of Jennifer Crecente, the niece of former Kotaku editor-in-chief Brian Crecente. She was murdered by a classmate the day after Valentine’s Day in 2006.

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Grand Theft A-Hole

We had a thin week for timely exploitables, but this piece of art from Grand Theft Auto V caught my eye. It’s like it was made for the ‘Shop Contest, and it’s your challenge this week. The sister is almost totally unobstructed, as is our surly gamer up front, and his head is easily swappable…

Bohemia Interactive, makers of ArmA II, has reset all of its user’s passwords in light of a security breach that exposed their login details. Bohemia assures that no credit card information was involved in the breach, and that the passwords themselves were encrypted. Still, users must request a new one here.

Watch EVO 2013 Streamed Live, Right Here

The Road to EVO—a series of tournaments leading up to the biggest fighting game tournament of the year—is coming to a decisive close. It’s time for the Evolution 2013 tournament, which starts today in Las Vegas, and we’re here to serve you all of the livestreams available to make you feel like you’re sitting right…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Let’s Make a Deal: The Winners

Who knew at the time, really? The business was so new, the fame so fleeting, no one could possible anticipate that Don Mattrick (above, right) would go from teenage video game whiz kid to, someday, the subject of the Kotaku ‘Shop Contest. At last that honor has arrived, courtesy of overall winner arniejolt! To recap,…

The PlayStation 4 will be hands-on for the public for the first time this coming week at Comic-Con 2013. Good, those lines shouldn’t be soul-crushingly long or anything. If you’re lucky enough to play the thing, Drive Club, Knack and Octodad: Dadliest Catch will be the demo titles.

Street Fighter IV Getting Five More Characters, One Never Seen Before

From EVO 2013 comes news that Street Fighter IV‘s next update will deliver four new characters—and a fifth never before seen in the series. Rolento, Elena, Hugo and Poison will join the roster, plus an unnanounced fifth fighter. The characters, plus six stages and the usual complement of adjustments and balances, will come to PS3,…

Sony Won’t Appeal Fine Related to 2011 PSN Hack

Sony has abandoned its appeal of the fine assessed by the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office for negligence in the infamous 2011 breach of users’ information that brought down all of PlayStation Network for more than a month. In January, the ICO assessed Sony a £250,000 penalty which … subtract 32 … multiply by 5 ……

What in God’s Name is Tekken Revolution Doing With Its Roster?

Tekken 3, way back in 1997, had plans to include a new animal character in the fighter roster—a salmon. It was quickly judged too ridiculous to justify a $1-per-play cost in an arcade. Well, Tekken Revolution is taking suggestions for new characters, and the fish is one of them. And the others are even weirder.…

Moneysaver: Steam Summer Sale Day 3 Breakdown [Updated Sunday 9:45am]

Steaming pile of deals. Steam Sale Day One | Steam Sale Day Two | Current Moneysaver | GTAV PS3 Bundle • Update 2 Tomb Raider ($12.50) | Amazon has Tomb Raider for $10.60, but is currently sold out of keys All of the current community vote options have been cheaper or cheaper in bundles. I…

Sex Bet on Wii Game Ends With Mountie Shooting His Wife

You can’t write headlines much weirder than that, but it is not in dispute that Keith Wiens, a retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, shot and killed his common-law wife after she demanded that he pay up—in foreplay, evidently—for losing to her in a Wii game. Wiens told a jury in British Columbia that he…

Moneysaver One-Shot: Grand Theft Auto V Playstation 3 Bundle

Cheap Los Santos real estate. Get $30 off the Grand Theft Auto V Playstation 3 Bundle by pre-ordering on Amazon. This is a 500GB latest-generation PS3, and this package also includes a free month of Playstation Plus. You were probably going to buy GTAV anyway, so what you’re really looking at here is a 500GB…

The Best of Kotaku, The Week of July 8th

Oh, hello weekend. How I’ve longed for you. If you’re just catching up on some gaming news and Kotaku articles, you can see my round-up of the highlights over at Kotaku Selects. This week included GTA V new trailer day, as well as Ash’s amazing photoshop post, so there’s definitely some fun stuff in there…

Twenty Things You Might Not Know About The PS4

If you’ve been good about keeping up with all the latest information about the PS4, the stuff in this video by PlayStationAccess might not be a surprise to you. I found a couple of things that were new to me, though—like did you know that the touchpad on the DualShock is also a pressable button?…

What Do You Think About The Newest Season of Dexter So Far?

This is it, people: the final season of Dexter, the show about a serial killer that kills serial killers (and sometimes other people, too). How are you liking the latest season? It’s been nerve-wracking for me—there’s so much in the air for Dexter. Deb hates him—that one scene where she says that he’s the one…