Activision Blizzard touted its Diversity Space Tool in a blog post on May 12, in which it claimed that both the Call of Duty: Vanguard and Overwatch 2 development teams beta tested the tool with much enthusiasm, then quickly walked this statement back on May 13 and said the tool “is not being used in active game…
Source: Kotaku – Activision Blizzard’s Diversity Tool Has A Long, Even More Embarrassing History
Sony might have made a splash with its recently-detailed PS Plus revamp, but Game Pass continues to grow its library. The park-builder Jurassic World Evolution 2 is obviously a main draw and—bonus!—out today. Later this week, Game Pass will also get one of the best games of the year: Vampire Survivors. Here’s…
Source: Kotaku – Game Pass Gets Vampire Survivors, One Of The Best Games Of The Year
There is a very large group of people who want you to know that multiplayer FPS Team Fortress 2, the 2007 game from Half-Life creators Valve, has a bot problem. A “rampant bot problem” we’re told, in hundreds upon hundreds of identically worded emails sent to Kotaku and every other gaming site. They want Valve’s…
Source: Kotaku – Team Fortress 2 Players Beg Valve To Acknowledge The Game’s Bot Problem
Here’s something that annoys me about modern video games: why can’t I buy a game on a disc—so that I own a copy, so that I can take advantage of sales, etc—install it, play it once then never have to get up off the couch and change discs ever again?
Source: Kotaku – Xbox Patent Sounds Cool For People Buying Games On Disc
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.
Source: Kotaku – Fall Guys Gets Free-To-Play Overhaul Next Month
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,…
Source: Kotaku – Take-Two CEO Acknowledges Frustrated Red Dead Online Players, But Offers Nothing Else
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.
Source: Kotaku – NYC Funding Million Bachelor’s Degree Program In Game Design
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.”
Source: Kotaku – Top Halo Pro Stops Playing In Protest Against Own Team
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.
Source: Kotaku – Fox News Is Already Using ‘Violent’ Video Games As Scapegoat For Mass Shooting
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.
Source: Kotaku – The Revamped PS Plus Lineup Is Stacked, Once You Make Sense Of It
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…
Source: Kotaku – Twitch Pulls Shooting Vid Quickly, But Facebook And Streamable Reuploads Reached Millions
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…
Source: Kotaku – Biden On Buffalo Shooting: ‘Hate That Remains A Stain’ On Nation’s Soul
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…
Source: Kotaku – The Best Lord Of The Rings Video Games
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.
Source: Kotaku – Somehow, The N64 Can Do Portal
Tragedy struck New York on May 14 as an 18-year-old white male shot and killed at least 10 people in the city of Buffalo, police said. The shooter, whose online username is reportedly “jimboboiii”, has been taken into custody after livestreaming the whole thing on gaming platform Twitch, the company confirmed on…
Source: Kotaku – Mass Shooting Apparently Planned On Discord, Streamed On Twitch, Investigated As Hate Crime
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…
Source: Kotaku – New Cloud Technology Warns You When Not To Play Kingdom Hearts
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.…
Source: Kotaku – Activision Blizzard’s New Diversity Game Tool Comes Across Terribly
