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The Hardcore Steam Cheating Community Sounds Wild

Steam’s cheating community is a network worth millions of dollars every year, and the shadowy rabbit hole goes deeper than you might think. In a 40 minute “Anti-Cheat” talk delivered earlier this year at Valve’s annual Steam Dev Days, Simon Allaey and Aarni Rautava of Easy Anti Cheat dished on Steam’s seedy underbelly. It is…

Blizzard, On Overwatch‘s Sombra: ‘We’re Not Very Good At ARGs’

Before Overwatch’s latest character, Sombra, was unveiled at BlizzCon over the weekend, she was the focal point of an alternate reality game (ARG) that lasted months. It was like a hydra. Fans would reach the end of one countdown, only for the belligerent beast to sprout two more. At BlizzCon, I spoke to two of…

Sims 4 Bug Leads Players To Count Their Calories

City Living, the latest expansion for the The Sims 4, introduced Festivals, which have food stalls where your sims can eat. It’s a nice bit of urban realism: when your sim is out and about, they can grab a quick bite on their way home. The problem is that some sims will never stop ordering…

Sombra is now available to play on Overwatch’s public test servers. I got to try her out at BlizzCon over the weekend and found her to be extremely powerful and fun, but potentially frustrating to play against. Go hack the planet and let me know what you think.

Why People Are Hyped About A Male Figure Skating Anime

Yuri on Ice!!! features one of the most tender male-male relationships ever seen in anime. And fans are going nuts over it. Yes, it’s the first male ice skating sports anime. Characters’ animated movements are sharp and its skating choreography has been praised by real skaters. But if you ask fans why they’re so enamored…

Some Diablo III Announcements You May Have Missed

Despite all those silly rumors about Diablo 4, Blizzard has made it clear that they see Diablo III as a live game that they want to keep updating and expanding for quite some time to come. Over the weekend, they made that even more clear. In addition to the big announcements—the Diablo 1 remake and…

A Look Back On Metal Gear Rising‘s Last Boss, Who Wanted To Make America Great Again

Election Day is tomorrow. America might elect a jackass to be their leader, and I am terrified. To cope, I recently played 2013’s Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and fought a power-crazed politician using my cyborg ninja powers. Senator Steven Armstrong is not a good man. He is the financier of two private military companies, the…

Watch Mass Effect: Andromeda‘s Sleek New Trailer

For the past week BioWare’s been teasing new Mass Effect: Andromeda news, and today it all culminated with a rad cinematic trailer, which you can watch right here. BioWare says that footage is all running in real-time, and the game is scheduled for “Spring 2017″ on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. There still isn’t much…

The Division‘s Next Expansion Transforms It Into An Intense 24-Player Survival Game

The forthcoming Survival expansion for Ubisoft’s huge third-person open-world shooter The Division will turn the game into a treacherous multiplayer survival game in which hunger, heat and thirst are as deadly as any enemies roaming the game’s virtual New York City. The game’s developers explained the ambitious mode during a surprise livestream on Monday morning—and…

The Incredible 60 Hour Journey To Beat An Impossible Mario Maker Level 

It took 32873 tries for YouTuber Val JP to beat a single Mario Maker level, and his journey to the finish line is one of the most inspiring things I’ve seen all year. You’ve got to watch it. Recorded earlier this year (but likely making the rounds now because of Reddit), the video below documents…

Street Fighter Juri Statue Looks Very Uncomfortable

As a big fan of Street Fighter’s South Korean monster, I was initially quite pleased with the latest statue from Pop Culture Shock Collectibles. Then I took a moment to really look at the straps on the side of her battle bib. Ouchie. For the most part it’s a very nice statue, as it should…

DC Legends Is Star Wars: Galaxy Of Heroes With A Story

Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes is a free-to-play RPG in which players build a team of characters from throughout Star Wars history and take them through a series of progressively difficult turn-based battles. Replace “Star Wars” with “DC Comics” in that description and you’ve got DC Legends When I previewed DC Legends back in July…

A Mistake In My Neighbor Totoro People Are Now Noticing

My Neighbor Totoro is a wonderful movie. It came out in 1988, but recently, people on Twitter seem to be noticing one thing: The goat’s teeth are all wrong. You remember the goat, right? (Yes, there is a goat.) Mei is walking around with her corn, and a goat walks up, and Mei is all,…

Looks like Akuma is coming to Street Fighter V. He’ll be playable at the PlayStation Experience in Anaheim next month.

Pokémon cartridge designs by Dan Clarke

How A Filthy Old Arcade Cabinet Is Restored To Its Former Glory

As you can probably guess, a lot of old arcade cabinets from the 80s aren’t exactly in the best shape in 2016. That doesn’t mean they can’t be salvaged though, as long as you’re willing to put a little love, cash and elbow grease into it. Tony Temple, whose arcade exploitswe’ve covered before, has detailed…

Unfinished Left 4 Dead Campaign Released By Original Creators

Turtle Rock Studios must be cleaning out some old closets now that they’re done with Evolve, because three days ago the team released the final, unfinished Left 4 Dead campaign they’d been working on before Valve took over the zombie shooter. It’s rough (much of the latter stages are Gray Box), but playable; you can…

World Of Warcraft‘s Most Popular Legacy Server, Nostalrius, Is Returning

Shortly before BlizzCon, the people behind recently shut down World of Warcraft legacy server Nostalrius put Blizzard on notice. “If Blizzard doesn’t make an announcement to honour their own core values, be sure that we will,” they wrote. BlizzCon’s come and gone, and Nostalrius is coming back. People miss older versions of World of Warcraft.…

Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Sombra’s Day Job

Sombra is finally here! After a months long, arduous ARG campaign from Blizzard teasing the latest Overwatch character’s reveal, the punk hacker will be available to play this week. She was greeted with a mixture of joy and sorrow, laughter and crying, and jokes…and more jokes So what took so long? What was Ms. Purple…

Blizzard’s Plan To Get Rid Of Gaps Between World Of Warcraft Expansions

After more than a decade of expansion cycles, Blizzard is changing their approach to World of Warcraft. Step one? Take players to a new planet. During a BlizzCon panel, World of Warcraft game director Ion Hazzikostas made a surprise announcement: the game is about to venture to a whole new planet, Draenei homeworld and demon…