Culture

No, Walmart Isn’t Telling Its Stores To Remove Violent Video Games

One day after Walmart asked employees to remove signage for “violent” video games, a news report said that Walmart is going one step further and ceasing sales for most video games. According to a Walmart representative speaking with Kotaku, that is not the case. “It is not true,” said a Walmart rep over the phone…

NBA 2K Announces WNBA Players, A River Of Sexism Follows

Yesterday, when WNBA star Breanna Stewart let her fans know she’ll be in NBA 2K20, coming out September 9, the top response asked whether the basketball game, which has a MyCareer mode, has a MyKitchen mode, too. The 20-year-old basketball sim is finally getting woman basketball pros, publisher Take Two announced yesterday. “It’s just as…

Fortnite‘s Unpopular Mechs Will Stay In Competitive Play [Updated]

Fortnite’s giant mechs, called Brutes, have been an unpopular addition to the game’s season 10. In a blog post today, developer Epic announced that the mechs will be staying in the game’s competitive mode, but with a tweak. Many players still don’t feel that tweak is enough. Some Fortnite players believe the Brutes are overpowered,…

‘Dad Builds’ Are Making Lazy Gaming OK, And I Love That

It has come to my attention that some of you have introduced a new term into the video game lexicon, one that describes a phenomenon of great interest to me and the public at large. I am talking, of course, of Dad Builds. What is a Dad Build? Why, it is any character that uses…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for having foolishly signed up for a rock-climbing competition even though I’m a total noob, because climbing people are overly supportive and encouraged me to enter. The weekend is also for soothing what is sure to be my overwhelming embarrassment with video games. Supergiant’s early access game Hades got a big updatethis…

Disney’s Haunted Mansion Is A Terrific Mess

The Haunted Mansion is one of Disney’s greatest creations. It’s also an unfixable, thematic mess, which is part of its appeal. Disney has allowed it to remain imperfect for the past half century, a wise exception to the company’s notorious perfectionism. This piece was first published on April 27, 2016. We’re bumping it today to…

Deep-Pocketed Collectors Are Fueling A Retro Game Gold Rush

Danielle Smith has spent half a million dollars on rare video games, most of it in the last nine months. And she’s just getting started. “I really just want the best of the best,” said Smith, 35. That half a million bucks has only bought her around 200 games. Last week, she spent $2,650 on…

ESPN Delays Apex Legends Tournament Highlights ‘Out Of Respect’ Following Mass Shootings

This weekend’s planned airing of the EXP Apex Legends Invitational at X Games tournament on ESPN2 has been postponed by the network, “out of respect for the victims and all those impacted in the immediate aftermath of the shootings.” The broadcast is meant to show highlights from the Apex Legends tournament that was held at…

No Man’s Sky Creator On New Multiplayer Features, Taming Animals, And More

When No Man’s Sky Beyond was announced in March, Hello Games called it “three major updates rolled into one larger free release.” Out August 14, the first will be a new approach to multiplayer, and the second is VR. Since that blog post, No Man’s Sky players have been waiting to hear what the third…

Track: Digital Love | Artist: Daft Punk | Album: Digital Love 

Quakin’ In His Boots

Emanuel Palalic is a character artist at id, where he’s worked on games like Doom and Quake Champions You can see more of Palalic’s art at his ArtStation page

Walmart Asks Employees To Remove Violent Video Game Signage

For the past couple of days, Walmart employees have been receiving memos instructing them to remove “any signing or displays that contain violent images or aggressive behavior.” Principal among the suggested items are demos and signs promoting violent video games. Vice first reported on the memo’s circulation earlier today. It tells employees to “remove,” “turn…

Cosplay’s “World Championships” Were Just Incredible

Most of the time cosplay is about having fun and hanging out with friends. Sometimes, though, it gets competitive, and there’s no bigger prize for serious devotees than the World Cosplay Summit, held every year in Japan. It’s basically a World Championships of cosplay, and as you can imagine, the entrants are out of this…

The Top Streamers On Twitch Now That Ninja’s Gone

Last week, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, much like his namesake, crept out of the figurative building—flanked on all sides by fanfare, cascading grey-blue mountains of Red Bull, and ill-considered jokes. Soon, he made his presence known under a different roof: Mixer, Microsoft’s competitor to Twitch. Blevins has left behind a void. The question is, who will…

Clever Player Creates First-Person Dungeon-Crawler In Mario Maker 2

The Mario Maker series offers creators an expansive suite of tools with which to build punishing, unique, or thought-provoking levels. A recent level uses these tools to meticulously recreate the first-person adventure style of old-school dungeon-crawlers like Ultima and Might and Magic in Super Mario Maker 2 Uploaded last week by Japanese creator Negitendo, “3D Maze…

Fortnite Is All About The Kids (And The Aesthetics)

The Fortnite World Cup was packed with young faces, both attendees and competitors. Unlike many other esport events, this one had a kid-friendly, earnest vibe that dovetailed well with the chaotic playground atmosphere of Fortnite. Kotaku editor-at-large Riley MacLeod came on Kotaku Splitscreen this week to talk about his coverage of the Fortnite World Cup…

Modern Warfare‘s Lack Of A Mini-Map Will Change How People Play Call Of Duty

Last week, Activision revealed the multiplayer mode for the softly-rebooted Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. 2019’s Duty is dropping the iconic mini-map to add more “realism” to multiplayer, and it’s the design decision that’s caused the most consternation in the Call of Duty community so far. Call of Duty’s mini-map has been a feature of the…

Speedrunners Baffled By Mysterious Stranger Sending Silent Hill 2 Puzzle Solutions

One of the challenges of speedrunning Silent Hill 2 is getting past the game’s puzzles. Puzzles are semi-randomly generated and will change on each playthrough. In the past week, a mysterious stranger has been slipping into speedrunners’ Twitch chats and revealing future puzzle solutions to them. It wasn’t clear how this stranger was getting that…

Ask Dr. NerdLove: Is It Selfish To Want More Attention From My Girlfriend?

Hello you terrible skinsacks of the noosphere, and welcome to Ask Dr. NerdLove, the dating advice column that charges into your love problems like 30-50 feral hogs. This week we’re tackling communication problems and how to not create new problems while trying to solve existing ones. How do you help your partner when their depression…

It Is Surprisingly Hard To Create An Incompetent Ass-Clown In Dungeons & Dragons

The great escapist fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons is that you are not a salaryperson shoveling handfuls of gummy bears into your mouth and rolling 20-sided dice. Rather, you are a singularly important hero with a singular capacity to disarm some impending plot bomb. It’s a time-tried formula, one that basically spawned an entire industry…