Seven Months After Smash Bros. Tournament, Organizers Say They Can’t Pay The Winners

Some of the world’s best Smash Bros. players say they are owed thousands of dollars for their performances in a tournament called BEAST 7 held in Sweden last February. Adam “Armada” Lindgren, the first place winner in the event’s Super Smash Bros. Melee bracket, tweeted yesterday that BEAST 7 had yet to provide “an explanation…

Hearthstone Streamer Uncovers Proof Of Guild Dedicated To Thwarting Him

Several times throughout his Twitch-streamed arena runs, Octavian “Kripparrian” Morosan has noticed odd things: repeating opponent names, accounts named “sniper,” and decks that seem constructed to beat his own draft. After some investigative work, Morosan found proof that this was no coincidence, uncovering a dedicated group of players who would build strong decks and wait…

I Might Be Losing It, But Splatoon 2′s Salmon Run Schedule Is…Fine?

I don’t know if this is some weird digital version of Stockholm Syndrome, or my trying to rationalize a Nintendo-ass decision about multiplayer. Whatever is going on, I’m surprised to report that I’ve started to like the way Salmon Run is only available during certain block schedules. From what I’ve seen online, most Splatoon players seem…

A Game That Explains Why Nobody Trusts Each Other Anymore

The Evolution of Trustis an interactive presentation by Nicky Case that explores cheating and cooperation. The short narrative experience attempts to explain the rise of mistrust and suspicion in today’s society through the lens of game theory. It’s fascinating, and it’s this week’s Indie Pick. The Christmas Truce of 1914 was a remarkable show of…

Battlegrounds‘ New First-Person Servers Are Intense

Survival shooter Battlegrounds’ substantial update this morning added two special servers specifically for first-person play. They’re brutal. Early last month, developer PlayerUnknown announcedthe first-person server update. Fans were thrilled. I couldn’t put it better than Kotaku’s Nathan Grayson: “Expect a tense game to get even tenser, with limited powers of astral projection no longer in…

Official Pokémon Tournament Only Allowed Monsters With Many Weaknesses

Last weekend, the weak inherited the Pokémon world for an official online tournament. Much like last month’s Tiny Tournament, players could only use a subset of the game’s hundreds of options. The Weakness Cup’s restriction, as its name implies, only allowed players to use Pokémon with five or more weaknesses to the game’s various types.…

The International 7 Ditches Dota 2‘s Confusing Underwater Map After Fans Complain

This year’s theme for The International is all about the ocean: there are aquatic cosmetics and a campaign about a sea-dwelling monster called Siltbreaker. But this year’s special map, Reef’s Edge, caused a stir in the Dota 2 community during TI7’s kickoff. As the group stage matches commenced yesterday, it became clear that all games…

Final Fantasy XV‘s Multiplayer Has A Ridiculously Detailed Character Creator

Final Fantasy XV’s multiplayer beta went live today, and in it, you can hack-and-slash through a few short quests. You can also spend hours creating your very own avatar, adjusting everything from facial tattoos to, uh, lower jaw width. There’s a lot of detail in this thing, to the point where you can actually choose…

Rash’s Smash Hits Will Leave ‘Em Cold

Sam Chester is a character artist at Rare, where he’s currently working on Sea of Thieves You can see more of Sam’s work at his personal site To see the images in their native resolution, click on the “expand” button in the top-left corner. Fine Art is a celebration of the work of video game…

Adam Ruins Everything (Except Our Podcast)

Adam Conover, creator and star of the excellent show Adam Ruins Everything, joins us on this week’s very special episode of Kotaku Splitscreen First Kirk and I talk about Pyre, Battlegrounds, and Dream Daddy before jumping into this week’s news (29:07) on GameStop’s Thanksgiving hours, Unsung Story’s Kickstarter disaster, and a gamer cruise that lost…

Playing Video Games On 16 Monitors At Once

Here’s Linus Tech Tips with a chiropractor’s dream: playing a single PC game across 16 monitors at the same time. First they try Minecraft: Then Tomb Raider, which didn’t really work. So it was off to Half-Life 2: Then PUBG, which didn’t work either, but Civ V sure did. Please note the hilarious placement of…

Aztez Is What Happens When Strategy Meets Brutality

Released this week on Steam, Aztez is a single-player strategy board game in which the ancient Aztecs attempt to survive and thrive until the Spanish invaders arrive. It just happens that surviving and thriving involves lots of bloody black and white beat-em up action. The two-man development studio known as Team Colorblind first introduced Aztez…

Guile Is Now Selling Hair Gel In Japan

Guile. Hair. Gel. It makes sense that the Street Fighter character would now be a hair product pitchman in Japan. Guile is the new spokesperson forJ-Gelfrom Yanagiya, a company that’s been making cosmetics since 1615. The official site has a humorous interview with Guile in which he says nuggets like this: “Disheveled hair is connected…

Danganronpa V3 Is Banned In South Korea [Update]

Released earlier this year in Japan, Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony has been rejected by South Korea’s Game Rating and Administration Committee. Update August 3 – 6:00AM: Sony Computer Entertainment Korea released a statement saying that due to the Game Rating and Administration Committee’s decision, it will not be releasing Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony in South…

“Nintendo” Probably Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does

The common assumption is that “Nintendo” (任天堂) means “leave luck to heaven” or even “to leave one’s fortune in the hands of fate.” Those assumptions, however, could be wrong. In Japan, Nintendo’s official logo still uses the kanji characters 任天堂, so it’s important to understand what they could have originally meant to company founderFusajiro Yamauchi.…

The Dock. Fårö in Gotland, Sweden. By David Olsson. 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! 

Dhalsim Cosplay Is Suitably Serene

You don’t see much Dhalsim cosplay. Let’s fix that, with this killer effort from Nein & Hex as the character’s Street Fighter V incarnation. Vid by Eighty Sixed