Kotaku
Xbox Patent Sounds Cool For People Buying Games On Disc

Microsoft have applied for a patent that, while not a perfect solution for every gripe you may have with modern consoles and digital ownership, may nevertheless be a great step forward for anyone who has a catalogue of games they own on disc but have bought (or are thinking of buying) a digital-only console.
Fall Guys Gets Free-To-Play Overhaul Next Month

It was a big day for jelly bean battle royale Fall Guys. Mediatonic announced the pandemic-era hit would go free-to-play, land on Xbox and Switch next month, and start its seasonal calendar over from scratch again. It’s effectively going the Rocket League route, but three years ahead of schedule.
Take-Two CEO Acknowledges Frustrated Red Dead Online Players, But Offers Nothing Else [Update]

It’s been nearly a year since Red Dead Online’s last major update. The long wait for new content has led to a growing movement among some players to #SaveRedDeadOnline, putting pressure on developer Rockstar using social media and emails. Today, Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Rockstar’s parent company Take-Two Interactive,…
NYC Funding $2 Million Bachelor’s Degree Program In Game Design

City College of New York will begin offering a bachelor’s degree in game design this fall, New York City mayor Eric Adams announced today, making it the first public institution in the city with such a program.
Top Halo Pro Stops Playing In Protest Against Own Team

Tyler “Spartan” Ganza, one of the best professional Halo Infinite players in the world, has voluntarily benched himself for the rest of the game’s scheduled season, alleging that his team, eUnited, is holding him to contract under conditions that are “unconscionable and oppressive.”
Fox News Is Already Using 'Violent' Video Games As Scapegoat For Mass Shooting

Time is a flat circle. The year is 2022, and a Fox News anchor recently asked an on-air guest whether or not he believed that video games enable mass shootings.
The Revamped PS Plus Lineup Is Stacked, Once You Make Sense Of It

With the big PS Plus relaunch on the horizon (get your Zero Dawn jokes out of here), we finally have an idea of what exactly to expect. Today, in a blog post, Sony outlined everything—games, streaming offerings, a partnership with Ubisoft—coming to the service. It’s a lot. Let’s break it down.
Twitch Pulls Shooting Vid Quickly, But Facebook And Streamable Reuploads Reached Millions

Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch said it removed a livestream of a mass shooting in Buffalo, New York over the weekend within two minutes of it going live. But that response time was not enough to stop recordings of the footage from spreading to other online platforms, like Facebook, where links to the heinous…
Biden On Buffalo Shooting: 'Hate That Remains A Stain' On Nation’s Soul

In the wake of the horrific shooting in Buffalo this past weekend, President Joe Biden and New York Governor Kathy Hochul issued statements in response to the tragedy. Both the President and the First Lady issued an immediate response on May 15, referring to the shooting as “senseless and horrific,” while announcing…
The Best Lord Of The Rings Video Games

Tolkien’s influence on video games stretches back decades. Fans have been playing games based on The Lord of the Rings (and The Hobbit) for almost as long as there have been video games, and for every misguided flop there has been a game that has been surprisingly OK for a licensed product. And in some cases much…
Somehow, The N64 Can Do Portal
Valve’s Portal, released in 2007 (!), is one of the last games you’d expect to see the humble little N64 being able to manage, and yet here we are in 2022, seeing it manage it quite nicely.
Mass Shooting Apparently Planned On Discord, Streamed On Twitch, Investigated As Hate Crime [Updated]

Tragedy struck New York on May 14 as an 18-year-old white male shot and killed at least 10 people and wounded three others in the New York city of Buffalo, police said. The shooter, whose online username is reportedly “jimboboiii,” has been taken into custody after livestreaming the whole thing on the gaming platform…
New Cloud Technology Warns You When Not To Play Kingdom Hearts

Once, long ago, buying and playing a video game was pretty easy. You bought the disc or cart, stuck it in the console, and hit play. Not so much anymore. Case in point: The not-so-great cloud-streaming-only versions of Kingdom Hearts released on Switch earlier this year recently got an update, and now feature a…
Activision Blizzard's New Diversity Game Tool Comes Across Terribly [Update]

Today Activision Blizzard fulfilled its daily oopsie quota by blogging about how the publisher’s subsidiaries have apparently been using a special tool to help develop more “diverse” characters. It apparently thinks it can accomplish this without, I don’t know, actually talking to or hiring marginalized developers.…
13 Killer Strategies For Dead By Daylight

If life were a Scream movie, I would likely have already been trapped under a garage door by now. It would have been punishment for spending $62 on a skort one time and watching Friday the 13th after eating a weed-infused chocolate chip cookie. It really enhanced the ki, ki, ki, ma, ma, ma of hockey mask killer Jason…
The Super Mario Daisy Fandom Is Ready To Riot Against Nintendo

Nintendo fans are currently up in arms, but not over graphical downgrades or Pokédex revamps. Nope, this time, it’s over a shunned character in an upcoming game, and not even an A-lister at that: Princess Daisy isn’t in Mario Strikers: Battle League.
Lego Star Wars Becomes First Non-Nintendo Game To Top Switch Charts In Over A Year

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga did something very few games have done over the last few years: It topped April’s NPD Switch sales chart, becoming the first non-Nintendo published game to do so in over a year. And Skywalker Saga not only topped the Switch sales charts last month, but the charts of all other…
Skyrocketing Retro Game Price 'Manipulation' Controversy Goes To Court

The market frenzy leading to record-breaking prices for retro games appears to have slowed since last year, but frustration over the collectible grading firm at the center of the spike hasn’t. Earlier this week a number of Wata Games customers filed a class action lawsuit attempting to put an end to some of the…
A Cyberpunk Game That's Blade Runner Meets Groundhog Day

Loopmancer is what would happen if a cyberpunk Sleeping Dogs was made into a Groundhog Day-esque roguelite.
Elden Ring Officially Mainstream As Sales Top Call of Duty

Recent NPD figures reveal that FromSoftware’s latest grueling action-RPG, Elden Ring, is toppling over literal titans as it outsells Call of Duty: Vanguard, challenges Cyberpunk 2077, and, as Forbes’ Paul Tassi highlights, has shipped up to “half the lifetime sales of the entire Dark Souls trilogy’’ while leaving its…
Leaker Says Konami Pulled Silent Hill Pics It Apparently Doesn't Want You To See

A well-known leaker who goes by the username Dusk Golem has obtained and shared several images from a supposed in-development Silent Hill game on Thursday. The screens, posted to Dusk Golem’s Twitter account, weren’t up for long. According to the leaker, Konami swiftly swooped in to take those images down, though the…
PS5, Xbox Delays Are Setting Switch Up To Dominate The Rest Of 2022

Following yesterday’s delay of Redfall and Starfield, Microsoft’s two big blockbusters for the year, the release slate for the back half of 2022 might seem especially barren. Pop quiz: Have you been paying attention to the Switch?
NFT Market Collapses Just As Square Enix Sells Tomb Raider To Bet Big On Blockchain

You know what no one could ever have predicted? That a market based on imaginary ownership of infinitely duplicable jpeg images might not be end-game, long-term sustainable. As The Wall Street Journal reported, the NFT market is “flatlining,” down 92 percent from last September. Now we’re seeing a far wider…
Crypto Pokémon Clone’s Currency Plunges To Less Than A Penny

Crypto markets are bottoming out and nothing’s immune, not even the potions critters use to breed in the Pokémon-style collectathon Axie Infinity. Called Smooth Love Potions, the currency has been trending down for some time now as players flood the market with it. For the first time in its history, however, it’s now…
Six Months Later, Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy Still Needs Some Work

When Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - Definitive Edition launched last year, it was a disaster. Three of the most beloved video games of all time had been officially re-released on modern hardware and not only looked like shit, but ran like it too. Things were so bad, in fact, that Rockstar had to offer fans some free…
Skyrim Player Recreates Themselves Perfectly In-Game

The very first time I played Skyrim back in 2011, I rushed through the character creation and made a guy that ended up looking like Matt Pike, which ruled. The second time, though, I spent an age trying to put myself in the game and couldn’t get anywhere near it.
PlayStation Boss Asks Staff To Respect All Abortion Opinions In Email About Cats

An internal email from PlayStation president Jim Ryan contains several paragraphs about cats, but doesn’t contain a hard stance in support of his staff’s reproductive rights, and even asks employees to “respect” anti-abortion views and opinions, leaving many PlayStation staff angry and upset.
Nintendo Still Silent On Workplace Allegations Despite Acknowledging Them Internally

It’s been nearly a month since a former employee filed a National Labor Relations Board complaint against Nintendo alleging surveillance, coercion, and retaliation. Outside of an initial statement denying the company engaged in union-busting, the house of Mario has remained publicly silent in the face of an increasing…
Alan Wake Is Coming To Switch And Also TV Via AMC Show

Today, in honor of the 12-year anniversary of Alan Wake’s original release this week, Remedy provided some fresh news about the franchise. Included was the announcement that the remastered Alan Wake is coming to Switch this year, as well as some more details about the barely-talked about TV show adaptation, first…
Looks Like Alan Wake 2 Concept Art Is All We’re Getting For A While

After previously promising to show off Alan Wake 2 this summer, Remedy Entertainment explained today that folks will need to wait a little longer for more info on the sequel to the beloved (and recently remastered) 2010 thriller.
Tired Of Battle Anime? Here's Four Wholesome Shows You Should Check Out

For those who tire of battle-centric shonen anime series and want a little bit more “aww” in their lives, these anime will warm your heart.
Sci-Fi Horror Masterpiece Prey Currently Free On PC, Along With Other Great Games

Arkane’s fantastic sci-fi immersive sim Prey is currently free via the Epic Games Store alongside two other great games. And we’ll talk about those games in a moment. But first let’s chat about what makes Prey so damn good.
So Much For Video Game Release Dates

Bethesda’s open world space RPG Starfield is the latest major 2022 release to slip to next year. But will it be the last? Probably not. So who’s next? God of War Ragnarök? Bayonetta 3? Gotham Knights? This fall, traditionally the biggest release season of the year, remains an almost entirely blank slate, and that…
Congrats On The Sex, Master Chief

I genuinely don’t think we’re prepared for what’s coming. If you thought the discourse was A Lot when he showed ass, brace yourself: In the latest episode of the Halo show, Master Chief had sex.
Starfield, Bethesda's Next Big RPG, Delayed To 2023

Starfield, the next big RPG from Elder Scrolls and Fallout developers Bethesda, has been delayed from a 2022 release into 2023, the company just announced.
New 40K Game Is XCOM With Space Marines, And It's Great

Like I’ve said before, there are too many Warhammer games, and one of the big downfalls of that carefree licensing is that when there are so many games coming out with the same branding they just become background noise. Which is a shame when one comes along that deserves to stand out.
Twitch Streamer Nearly Burns Down Kitchen
Streamer Kjanecaron was doing a subathon earlier today for her 92,000 followers and decided to spend some of that time doing some cooking. It was a bad idea.
RIP iPod, Home Of The Mobile Gaming Renaissance (2001–2022)

Pour one out for every kid who one-strapped a backpack in middle school, as they’re likely in mourning today. With Apple’s discontinuation of the 7th-generation iPod Touch, announced yesterday, it’s official: the iPod is dead.