British Game Developer Says He Was Denied US Entry Over Iraq Visit [Update]

Indie developer Malath Abbas should be settling in for this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Instead, he’s stuck at Vancouver airport, after U.S. Customs and Border Protection blocked his entry into the country [Update: he’s since been allowed in]. Abbas, who holds a British passport, tells Kotaku that prior to leaving the UK…

Nice New Controllers, Microsoft

Microsoft has been on a roll lately with its special edition Xbox One controllers. The Elite is almost perfect, the Lunar White is gorgeous…and now there are these guys. They’re called Dusk Shadow (the blue one) and Copper Shadow (the…copper one). They’re regular controllers at a regular price, just with that nice gradient effect down…

The Art Of Shin Megami Tensei IV

Even though I love Persona, I’d never played the core Shin Megami Tensei series before 2013’s IV. That gorgeous art pushed me over the edge, though, so it’s a pleasure to be able to showcase some of it here on Fine Art tonight. The pieces here are all from Udon’s Shin Megami Tensei IV art…

Fallout 4’s Impression Of The Captain America: Civil War Trailer

Iron Man? Check. Captain America? Check. Spider-Man? Yup, he’s there too. Made by UpIsNotJump, it’s not a perfect recreation; the environments and outfits are cobbled together from those already found in Fallout 4, not brand new assets that exactly match those in the movie, but then, that just adds to the post-apocalyptic scavenger charm of…

Ark: Survival Evolved Added Poop To Avoid Putting In A Suicide Key

In Ark: Survival Evolved, your character just kinda poops sometimes. It’s a little alarming at first, in the same way that I imagine pooping for the first time in real life is. The origin of that funny mechanic? Grimly serious. Turns out, Studio Wildcard co-founder Susan Stieglitz came up with it in order to get…

Shaq And A-Rod Bought Into A League Of Legends Team

Apparently unwilling to let Rick Fox have League of Legends all to himself, Shaquille O’Neal and the Yankees’ A-Rod just announced that they are getting into the esports business by investing in the squarely middle-of-the-road LoL and Counter-Strike organization NRG. In a statement to The Daily Dot, NRG chairman Andy Miller said that Shaq “has…

It’s Hard To Get Valve To Talk About Whether They Still Make Games

Recently at GDC I got to try out Valve’s new collection of VR game vignettes, The Lab. It was cool. It was also… another set of scattered ideas. It’s been years since Valve released a big game. The Lab is Valve’s Vive launch title, and it strings a series of VR minigames together with an…

An Indie Game With Some Very Cool Scene Transitions

I found this game Anamorphine at a Microsoft press event on Tuesday during GDC. It’s trippy, pretty, and it’s got some very cool scene transitions. We all know how much I love cool scene transitions The part I played had me walking through abstract dreamscapes that reflected the emotional fallout from my character’s relationship with…

What Destiny’s Menus Could Have Looked Like

Destiny has a hell of a user interface. It’s nice to look at, but like many things in Destiny it’s also nice to use. Just like any part of any finished video game, it went through a lot of rough drafts to get to where it is now. Yesterday at the Game Developers Conference in…

Blogging For Final Fantasy XV Sounds Really Tough

Today on the Square Enix blog, Final Fantasy XV community manager Taji tells the story of his adventures to write an article on the Internet, which is something we here at Kotaku are intimately familiar with. As Taji explains, he was sneaking around the FFXV office when he found an interesting-looking creature on one of…

Man Makes Up For Never Collecting A Charizard Pokémon Card As A Kid

Back in the good old days, everybody knew that Charizard was the only Pokémon card that really mattered. The unspoken understanding among Pokémon fans was that if you didn’t have a holographic Charizard, your card collection was shit. Sorry, it’s true! Not everyone was lucky enough to actually have a holographic Charizard, however. In the…

Here’s your first look at gameplay footage from Star Wars Battlefront’s upcoming Outer Rim expansion, including a cute nod to Han and Greedo’s preference for shooting each other first.

Mortal Kombat Characters Are Getting Drunk for St. Patrick’s Day

Today, Bo Rai Cho isn’t the only drunken master in Earthrealm. Everybody in Mortal Kombat X will be throwing back green beers and feeling a little bit luckier this March 17th. The new Watch Out Leprechauns premier tower went up earlier this week, bundling together eight matches where players will have to contend with modifiers…

The Year In StarCraft II

With StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void out the door, what’s next for Blizzard’s seminal RTS franchise? What else is coming this year? LET’S FIND OUT. On this week’s episode of our podcast, Kotaku Splitscreen, I’m joined by StarCraft II lead producer Tim Morten, who tells us about his history in the games industry and…

Dark Souls Fan Editing Full-Length Movies Telling Each Game’s Confusing Story

It’s tough enough to follow what’s happening in Dark Souls that Bandai Namco ran a contest asking people to help explain it. But if you’re looking for something in-depth, MoonlightButterfly on YouTube has you covered. I sorta know what happened in Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, and Bloodborne, even if the story isn’t…

Damn, People Who Sell DayZ Cheats Make A Lot of Money

Services that sell game-breaking cheats are no secret; many multiplayer games, from Counter-Strike to GTA V, have their share of dishonest players. And, as it turns out, the people providing these cheats are rolling in the dough. As reported by PCGamesN, DayZ developer Eugen Harton had a GDC presentation yesterday that touched on Bohemia Interactive’s…

The Games That Inspired The Year’s Best Game Developers

We asked one question to the winning game developers at last night’s Game Developers Choice and Independent Games Festival awards: “What is the one game that inspired you to go into the creation of video games?” Here’s what they said: Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes (Steel Crate Games), IGF Winner for Excellence In Design “StarCraft.…

Angered Game Developer Sues Critic Jim Sterling For $10 Million

If game critic and video-maker Jim Sterling has a nemesis, it’s game developer Digital Homicide. That name might not sound familiar, as they’re a small studio that has released a couple of games on Steam. But they may soon enter notoriety after this month’s unprecedented actions. On March 16, Digital Homicide formally filed a lawsuit…