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CultureAmong Us Gets Airship Map And New Update Later This Month
Hit murder mystery sim Among Us will get an account system, new mechanics, and its long-awaited airship map on March 31, maker Innersloth announced yesterday. First revealed last December, the airship map will have new tasks associated with it, and be the 2018 party game’s biggest to-date. Here’s everything else this month’s free update is…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureEverything We Saw In Today’s Square Enix Presents
Square Enix held its first Nintendo Direct-style “Square Enix Presents” showcase today, and while most of what was shown was stuff we’ve seen before, there were a few surprises. For one, Life is Strange: True Colors, the latest game in the visual narrative series, is coming later this year. Square Enix’s upcoming PS5 console-exclusive Project…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureFinal Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis Will Have Loot Boxes
Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis, the mobile compilation aiming to bring all of the Final Fantasy VII extended universe’s stories together in one place, will have loot boxes, creative director Tetsuya Nomura confirmed yesterday in a new interview with Famitsu While the smartphone game itself will be free, there will be monetization mechanics built in…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureGeForce Now Video Game Streaming Service Doubles In Price
Nvidia is raising the price of its GeForce Now game streaming service from $5 a month to $10, the company announced in a blog post this morning GeForce Now has two tiers. A free version lets users stream games they own in sessions of up to one hour, while a premium tier lets them stream…
By Ethan Gach -
CulturePS5 VR Controllers Ditch The Magic Wand Look
Sony shared a glimpse of the new controllers that will be apart of its next-gen VR add-on for the PS5 in a blog post today and they look nothing like the glowing wands used for the company’s existing PSVR headset. The new controllers almost look like an optical illusion, and also have a lot more…
By Ethan Gach -
OpinionDying Light 2‘s Developers Are Indulging Toxic Gamers
As promised, Polish developer Techland put out a video today updating the world on the state of zombie parkour thriller Dying Light 2. It’s actually an extremely concise look at one of the most toxic cycles underlying the video game industry. In the first half of the roughly three-minute video, various Techland developers read expletive-filled…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureXbox Gets New Suspend Feature To Help With Slow Download Speeds
Download speeds on consoles are notoriously bad, especially if your internet isn’t lightning fast to begin with. A new feature rolling out now on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S for Xbox Insiders is aimed at improving them by making it easier to suspend existing games while downloading new ones. “Suspend in the queue will…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureActivision Blizzard CEO To Get Even Bigger Bonuses While Others Get Laid Off
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick routinely gets millions in stock bonuses every year based on how the company is doing. Now he’s set to get even more, for a total payout of nearly $200 million according to CtW Investment Group, a union pension fund advocacy organization. And it’s all thanks to a clause in his…
By Ethan Gach -
CulturePlayers Aren’t Happy About Assassin’s Creed Valhalla‘s Transmog Tax
A couple months after release, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla finally has transmog, but not as some players had originally envisioned it. The feature falls short of how it’s been implemented in past games, and comes with a 50 silver tax on each transaction to boot, leaving a lot of us, myself included, scratching out heads. Transmog,…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureRiot Games Says It Finds No Evidence Of Wrongdoing By CEO Accused Of Sexual Harassment
A three-person special committee tasked with reviewing a third-party investigation into allegations of sexual harassment by Riot Games CEO Nicolo Laurent announced to the company’s staff today that it found “no evidence” of misconduct and recommended no action be taken against the executive, the Washington Post reports. The news comes the same day that Riot…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureJade Raymond Forms New Studio, Working On Unannounced Game For PlayStation
Former Assassin’s Creed producer and EA manager Jade Raymond announced the formation of a new Montreal-based independent studio called Haven today. Its first project will be a brand new IP being developed for PlayStation, she wrote in a post over on the company’s blog. “And so today I’m announcing Haven, an independent studio where many…
By Ethan Gach -
OpinionImpressionsDark Alliance Is A Spiritual Successor To Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance In Name Only
I went into my recent Dark Alliance demo with development studio Tuque Games expecting to briefly relive the grim, bloody hack and slash glory of the original Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance games. The new game, while pitched as a spiritual successor, feels very different, however. Not bad, just different Dark Alliance, priced at $40 and…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureAssassin’s Creed Valhalla Gets Transmog And More Cats In Next Big Update
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s 1.2 update arrives tomorrow and adds transmog so that players can finally wear whatever they want without hurting their stats while murdering the English countryside. Transmog, or what Ubisoft is calling “Change Appearance,” will let you customize the look of each piece of your gear at the Blacksmith Gunnar for a nominal…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureDestiny 2‘s Trials Of Osiris Still Offline Following Match Fixing Scandal
It’s been a rough year for Destiny 2‘s high stakes competitive mode. Trials of Osiris has been plagued by cheating, glitch exploits, and lopsided matchmaking. Now it’s a hotbed of match fixing, as players try to game the system to get its coveted rewards without actually putting in the work, and Bungie’s decided to take…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureApril Fallout 76 Update Will Finally Let Players Have Multiple Camps
Camp building is at the center of Fallout 76 and the game’s April 27 update will finally let players create, store, and manage multiple campsites, a massive boon to the game’s more industrious architects. Called “Locked and Loaded,” the April update, which also includes a new loadout manager to quickly swap between character builds, will…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureLoop Hero Will Soon Let You Save The Dang Game
The deck-building, dungeon-making roguelite RPG Loop Hero is getting some much needed quality-of-life improvements in an upcoming update, the game’s developers announced yesterday. The most important of these fixes? Finally letting you save your game. Technically, Loop Hero does that already, saving all progress automatically as you complete expeditions. But there’s no way to save…
By Ethan Gach -
ReviewsToysLo-Fi Chill Beats Anime Girl Now A Collectible Statue
The face of lo-fi chill beats music on YouTube is being turned into a 12 inch collectible statue because if you love something set it free, or in this case make a toy out of it. Lo-fi chill beats became a thing back in the summer of 2018, with channels blowing up on YouTube that featured…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureDestiny 2‘s New Boss Is Turning Players Into Reply Guys
Much of Destiny’s story exists anywhere but the main game. The version you get from playing through its campaign today is very different from the one that existed only a year ago, and it’s also very different from the one you’ll get having played Destiny for hundreds of hours, soaking up its lowkey ambient world-building…
By Ethan Gach -
CultureRoblox Goes Public, Wall Street Decides It’s Worth Six Bethesdas
The Roblox Corporation, maker of the online game creation platform Roblox, went public yesterday, selling shares in the company on the New York Stock Exchange for the first time since it was founded back in 2004. It ended the day trading at just under $70, giving it a valuation of $45 billion, or approximately six…
By Ethan Gach
Ethan Gach
I'm a senior reporter who's been writing about games and internet culture at Kotaku for almost 10 years. I cover everything from company earnings and player boycotts to emerging trends in gaming like AI, creator economies, and the changing console landscape. You can share story and news tips securely and anonymously at [email protected] or over Signal at +12673263042.
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