Culture

Customs Seizes 86,000 Fake Pokémon Toys For Very Weird Reasons

US Customs has seized 86,000 bootleg Pokémon figures, worth an estimated $600,000, hidden inside a shipment arriving from Hong Kong earlier this week. Which is fine, that happens all the time, and fake Chinese stuff is violating trademarks, so this is literally Customs’ job. But instead of just saying that the figures are fake and…

EA Is Releasing Command & Conquer And Red Alert’s Source Code

We’re all very used to seeing modern games ignore or even remove mod support, so it’s nice to see that EA of all publishers is going the extra mile for the modding community with the upcoming re-releases of the original Command & Conquer and Red Alert In a post on the project’s Reddit page, producer…

Shady Key Reseller G2A Fucks Up Spectacularly

Last year, G2A—a supremely suspect grey market seller of PC games—offered to pay studios 10x the cost of their games if it was found to be selling stolen keys. Only one company took them up on the offer, and whaddya know, it turns out G2A was selling a bunch of stolen keys. Factorio creators Wube…

I Refuse To Regret Spending $450 On A Bright Pink Gamer Chair

Gamer chairs have always struck me as an incredibly funny concept. In 2006, a desperate luxury car seat company called DXRacer decided to roll the dice on pivoting to video games, laying down the racing car-esque blueprint for gamer chairs as we know them. So now professional players and streamers achieve maximum performance in disembodied…

The body of former WWE wrestler, martial artist, and actor Shad Gaspard was found Wednesday morning on California’s Venice Beach, after being carried away by a riptide over the weekend while saving his 10-year-old son’s life. Gaspard was the body model and a motion-capture artist for Kratos in 2018’s God of War.

System Shock 3 Now In The Hands Of Tencent [UPDATE]

OtherSide Entertainment announced this morning that the long-awaited System Shock 3 will now be handled by Chinese conglomerate Tencent. “We are happy to announce that Tencent will be taking the System Shock franchise forward,” an official statement reads on both OtherSide’s website and Twitter. “As a smaller Indie studio, it had been challenging for us…

Stadia Exclusivity Will Keep Serious Sam 4 Off PS4 And Xbox Until 2021

Serious Sam 4 is coming to PC and Stadia in August 2020. Yes, you read that right… Stadia. While previous previews of the game indicated it would also appear on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Google’s cloud gaming service will get Serious Sam 4 long before any traditional consoles. “The game is still coming to…

Borderlands 3’s Powerful Cartel Anointments Will Still Drop After Event Ends

While the neon-soaked mission itself is pretty dang fun, Borderlands 3’s ongoing “Revenge of the Cartels” event has been embraced by the community for another reason: the introduction of weapon anointments that raise damage to astronomical levels. There was some worry that these anointments would no longer appear on drops after the event ends in…

How’s It Going?: Homemade Edition

Welcome to Wednesday, and welcome back to our daily open thread. Last night for dinner I had a tomato sandwich with greenhouse tomatoes from my CSA, homemade bread, and homemade mayo. I will admit to smugly eating the sandwich while being very impressed with my culinary prowess. (I’ve never made mayo before—it is surprisingly not…

Track: Innocence | Artist: Hitomi | Album: I Am 

Report: Hideo Kojima’s Longtime Producer Joins Tencent

Ken Imaizumi is a longtime collaborator with Hideo Kojima. He produced Metal Gear Solid 4, both Metal Gear Solid V installments, and, most recently, Death Stranding. According to South China Morning Post, he has now joined Tencent as the game arm’s production director. Tencent also told the publication that Halo 4 lead designer Scott Warner…

Not Crowded. Osaka, Japan. By Brian Ashcraft | Twitter JPGs is a photo peek into wherever gamers might find interesting. If you’re a photographer and have images you want to share, drop us a line

Gen Con 2020, America’s Biggest Board Game Show, Has Been Cancelled

Just as video games has E3, board games has Gen Con, an enormous trade show that takes place every August and attracts tens of thousands of visitors from across the world. And just like E3, this year’s Gen Con has been cancelled. Not that anybody really expected the show to take place, since August isn’t…

Twitch’s Safety Advisory Council Rollout Has Been A Disaster

Last week, Twitch announced a new Safety Advisory Council intended to provide input on some of Twitch’s most pernicious issues, including work-life balance, safety and moderation, and protection of marginalized groups. The council is made up of social media experts as well as a small handful of streamers. One of those streamers, Steph “FerociouslySteph” Loehr,…

Please Enjoy These Slightly Terrifying 3D Celebrity Heads

Hadi Karimi is a 3D artist from Iran who has sculpted some very lifelike celebrity busts. You can see more of Karimi’s stuff at his personal site andArtStation page

Paradox Devs Don’t Freak Out Too Much Over Leaks

During the latest episode of Paradox Interactive’s in-house podcast, chief marketing officer Daniel Goldberg and chief business development officer Shams Jorjani tackled the topic of leaks, specifically how these situations feel from the developers’ side. These kinds of candid discussions are a rarity in the video game industry, and the unusual perspective here makes for…

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Six Months Later

There are Star Wars games, and then there’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Created by Respawn Entertainment, the studio behind Titanfall and Apex Legends, Fallen Order brought some spunk to that long-ago galaxy. Far, far away from a phoned-in, branded cash grab, Fallen Order treated players to an adventure that was part Dark Souls, part…

You Have A Week To Catch Gigantamax Eevee In Pokémon Sword And Shield

Catching an Eevee isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Catching an Eevee that’s bigger than your house. From now through May 25, Pokémon Sword and Shield’s Gigantamax Eevee is available in the Wild Area. It’s a bit fluffier than normal Eevee—check out that mane—and tougher, too. And yes, you can capture it. There’s just one…

Mafia Remake Is A ‘Complete Overhaul’ Of The Original Game

Following a long series of teases and leaks, 2K Games finally explained what’s going on with its recently announced Mafia: Trilogy. Mafia II is getting remastered, while the first game in the series is getting fully remade. “The beloved, critically acclaimed original is being completely remade from the ground up as Mafia: Definitive Edition,” 2K…

Mysterious PS3 Gears Of War 3 Footage Appears Online [Update]

New footage has emerged of 2011’s Gears of War 3 running on PlayStation 3, which is weird given that Gears of War games have always been console-exclusive to Xbox. Two individuals familiar with the pre-release build of the game say it was made by Epic Games, the studio behind the series at the time, but…