Ethan Gach

Awesome Games Done Quick Raises A Record Breaking $2.2 Million For Cancer Prevention

All week long, the Awesome Games Done Quick marathon has been streaming speedruns to raise money for charity, but the last day was especially dramatic thanks to robots and a ton of last minute donations. It was just after noon yesterday when AGDQ broke the $1,000,000 mark. Over the next twelve hours, however, the group…

China’s 2016 World Electronic Sports Games Were Lit

China has been building ghost cities, constructing man-made islands in the Pacific, and more recently diving head-first into the world of competitive gaming. When it comes to esports, the World Electronic Sports Games are entirely next level thanks to gigantic prize pools, unusual rules, and inconsistent live streams. The WESG 2016 took place at the…

Sunday Comics: Flying Monster Guy

Welcome to Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics that usually occurs on Sunday except when it doesn’t. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon. Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published January 10. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published January 9. Read more…

Miami Heat’s Esports Partner Gets Counter-Strike Team Following Labor Dispute

The Counter-Strike players for the esports organization Team SoloMid have all left following a dispute with owners over which leagues they could play in. Instead, the squad have all joined with Misfits, an organization that just this week announced its new partnership with the Miami Heat News came by way of two announcements, first from…

Speedrunners Race Their Own Hellish Creations With Super Dram World

In the waning hours of the Awesome Games Done Quick charity marathon, player grandpoobear raced through Super Dram World, a game designed to torture speedrunners. If you weren’t aware, Super Dram World is a hacked version of Super Mario World for the SNES. It was inspired by a previous hack of the game called Kaizo…

Watch The Final Day Of The Weeklong Awesome Games Done Quick Charity Marathon

It’s almost the end of the 2017 Awesome Games Done Quick at the Hilton Washington Dulles Airport Hotel in Herndon, VA. Speedrunners from the far corners of the internet meet in person to raise money for charity by playing their favorite games apace. Along with its summer variant, the Awesome Games Done Quick marathon has…

Counter-Strike Pro Is Godlike With His Starter USP

Janusz “Snax” Pogorzelski is a beast with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s silencer pistol, and a recent match at the WESG 2016 CS:GO Finals proves it. Virtus.Pro’s Snax is routinely one of the best players currently in the game, known in part for his prowess with the USP-S, CS:GO’s version of the previous game’s USP. It’s a…

The Weekend In Esports: Some Pros Are About To Get Rich In China

This weekend marks the end of the first World Electronic Sports Games finals, with several tournaments across Dota 2, Hearthstone, and more featuring giant prize pools thanks to the event’s deep-pocketed organizers. Unlike your regular esports tournament, WESG 2016 teams each represent a country, much like the World Cup. It also takes place it China,…

The Week In Games: Hold On To Your Vocals

The latest Hatsune Miku game hits the West this week along with a handful (literally) of other games. Prepare your ears for the tones of the future and some beats that will blow your mind. For those unacquainted with the Hatsune series, like me, they are ports of arcade rhythm games that star a Vocaloid…

Gaming’s First Vibrator Turns 15 Years Old This Weekend

The PlayStation 2 version of Rez had one of video gaming's most unique peripherals

Track: Aurora Northern Quarter | Artist: Lone | Album: Reality Testing Kotaku Soundtrack is a selection of the stuff we’re listening to at the moment.

The Uncharted Movie That Was Supposed To Come Out This Year Now Has A Script

Joe Carnahan, the writer currently attached to a film adaptation of Uncharted, just finished the most current draft of its screenplay according to a recent post he made on Instagram Carnahan, best known for directing The Grey, a movie in which Liam Neesons punches wolves, was revealed to be penning words for Sony’s blockbuster third-person…

Digital Chaos Wins Its First Big Dota 2 Tournament

Just a week into 2017, Digital Chaos showed that their best days are still ahead after taking first place at the ESL One Genting event and making it their first big tournament win since becoming a Dota 2 team back in 2015. After placing second at TI6 last August, the esport’s biggest event of the year,…

Sunday Comics: Get Good

Welcome to Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics that usually occurs on Sunday except when it doesn’t. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon. Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published January 7. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published January 2. Read more…

People Have Started Hacking Nintendo’s NES Classic And Adding More Games To It

It was only a matter of time before people found a way to hack Nintendo’s NES Classic, and that time has come. Earlier this week, modders trading tips on a Russian forum discovered a way to add ROMs to add extra games to the system that was previously limited to only thirty A modder going…

Square Enix released a new trailer for Final Fantasy XIV’s upcoming Patch 3.5, “The Far Edge of Fate,” the first part of which is due to release January 17. The update will include a new Feast map, a couple dungeons, side quests, and new gear. The game’s next major expansion is Stormblood, set to launch…

Steam Reaches 14 Million Concurrent Users For First Time In Its History 

Earlier today, Valve’s digital distribution platform reached a new peak of just over 14.2 million simultaneous users. It’s the latest milestone in the platform’s 13 year history and comes shortly after its most recent winter sale concluded earlier this week. Perhaps not unexpectedly, many of the same games that led Steam in revenue for 2016…

The Weekend In Esports: The Smite World Championship Returns To Atlanta

2017’s only just started and there’s already a ton happening in esports this weekend. If you’re snowed in or just looking to completely ignore the world around you, we’ve got you covered. Here’s when and where you can watch the biggest events happening in pro gaming this weekend. Smite The World Championship for Smite is…

CNN Shows Fallout Computer Terminal In A Video About Russian Hacking

In a video from December 30, 2016, CNN used footage from Fallout’s hacking mini-game as B-roll to illustrate reports of recent, real-life hacks committed by the Russian government. Update 1/4/2016: As pointed out by reader Dustin Nikolich, it appears the footage in question was derived from flash game based on Fallout 3‘s terminal hacking created…

Modders Are Adding The Entirety Of Liberty City Into GTA V

OpenIV was used to start cracking open Grand Theft Auto V back in 2015, and now the Russian developers behind the modding tool have set their sites on bringing GTA IV’s Liberty City into the series’ latest entry. The group made the announcement yesterday, stating, “The Liberty City will not replace Los Santos or Blaine…