Kotaku older than one year ago

#steam Valve rolled out "all-new server and client code" supporting downloads over its Steam digital distribution service, intriguingly noting that, "soon, Dota 2 will be delivered using it." More »

#watchthis So Final Combat, China's seemingly shameless rip-off of Team Fortress 2, isn't as shameless as we first thought. I mean, it's not entirely lifting content from Valve's shooter. It's lifting it from EA's Battlefield Heroes as well! More »

#totalrecall The Mario movie we ended up with in 1993 was nothing like the games it was based on. An earlier draft for the film, however, was a lot more faithful. More »

#greatideas In the first mission of the upcoming computer game that Chris Hazard, PhD, has been trying to make since 1999, our hero, a man named Holloway meets himself. More »

#domainstruggle Go ahead. If you haven't already done so today, go to ModernWarfare3.com. You'll see that you're directed to the official Battlefield 3 web site. That's some good trolling, no? But who's sticking it to Activision by redirecting visitors from what appears to be an official looking Call of Duty site to one of its chief rivals? More »

#papersplease While pursuing those responsible for leaking a preview build of Deus Ex Human Revolution onto the internet, publishers Square Enix discovered that the game (well, part of the game) had been a copy they'd hosted on Valve's Steam service. More »

#doitdemostyle In Catherine, Vincent tries to get a little something something for nothing, cheating on his long-time girlfriend Katherine with the evil slutcake Catherine. Atlus gives fans a little something for nothing on July 12 with a downloadable Catherine demo for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. More »

#watchthis This time-lapse video shows you just how diligently an entire server's worth of Minecraft players worked for their art. After three days solid of non-stop building, this multi-level replica of New York's Penn station is truly impressive. Not only did players create the above-ground portion of the transportation hub, but they dug deep below (as Minecraft players tend to do) and created the train bays as well. More »

#ohdear Andrew McMillen, who published the original report on IGN claiming poor work conditions at LA Noire developer Team Bondi, has now published on GI.biz what's claimed to be a series of leaked internal emails that don't exactly paint Bondi's boss, Brendan McNamara, in a good light. More »

#lag Regarding life in space, everyone has three questions: How do you poop, has anyone screwed, and can you play video games up there. Alright, maybe the first two are more commonly asked, but we have an answer to the third question now. More »

#watchthis Spoiler alert? Only if you planned to play community made campaign "Suicide Blitz 2" in Left 4 Dead 2, currently the officially featured fan-created add-on for Valve's zombie horror first-person shooter, the game that has a very neat Portal 2 Easter Egg buried within. More »

#hatbasedeconomics If you've waited this long to finally play a game of Team Fortress 2, now may be the best time. Or at least the cheapest, as Valve is giving Team Fortress 2 away for free—forever—with the team-based first-person shooter now solely supported by microtransactions. More »

In what does not seem like a positive sign for Microsoft's Games For Windows efforts, the Games For Windows Marketplace is merging with Xbox.com, a move that the Xbox 360 maker says is for convenience and ease. More »

#itonlydoesoffline At a shareholders' meeting in Tokyo today, Sony boss Sir Howard Stringer got up on stage and had to field questions about the recent PlayStation Network attacks, which resulted in one of the biggest thefts of personal details in the history of the internet. More »

#watchthis? Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a California law banning the sale of violent video games to minors was unconstitutional. You may have read about that decision and the arguments for and against the ruling. Would you like to see it crudely animated? More »

#blizzard Players of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, the most recent expansion to Blizzard's still rather popular online role-playing game, are now in the throes of the game's latest content update, "Rage of the Firelands" (AKA patch 4.2). But if you're a new, WoW-curious gamer, Blizzard has something new for you too. More »

#quotable Justice of the Supreme Court Antonin Scalia defends the Supreme Court's decision to keep violent video games in the hands of California gamers based on the First Amendment. More »

#3ds In building the 3D remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the mandate for the developer Grezzo was to preserve fans' memories of the original as much as possible. That meant, where possible, that bugs from the original Nintendo 64 game were intentionally left in. More »

#hackattack The teen linked by international law enforcement to anarchist hacking group LulzSec told family he was spending his days and nights locked in his room gaming, not hacking, the Mirror reports. More »

#psnoutage A new lawsuit alleges that Sony fired workers in its network security operations two weeks before a cyberattack brought down the PlayStation Network. More »

#xboxlive In the throes of the 23-day PlayStation Network Outage, when people were vowing they'd sell their PS3s and go join Xbox Live, Microsoft's most provocative comment was a low-key prediction that it would see more traffic on its service. Yesterday, though, Xbox's senior executive finally said what's bad for the goose is bad for the gander. More »

#xboxlive Backbreaker: Vengeance, the minigame sequel to the more popular elements of last year's Backbreaker, will release on Xbox Live on June 29, but won't be coming to PlayStation 3 outside of Europe. More »

#publicrelations If you know the name Jim Redner, there's a good chance you know him for the single Duke Nukem Forever tweet that caused a brief public relations shitstorm last week. If you don't, Jim Redner will tell you all about the "brain fart" that caused Duke Nukem Forever's publisher to drop him like a bad habit. More »

#watchthis The gaming provocateur (and World of Warcraft power user) Athene says his mom wanted him to post this. It sounds like it came from the man himself, except for the part where she stutters over the pronunciation of the company's name at the beginning. More »

#guesteditorial There has been quite a lot of talk about the unusual making of Duke Nukem Forever. Years of production and numerous delays made the game almost a phantom: like some mystical beast that was oft spoken of but never seen. Once the game was released, even more fuel was added to the fire of commotion surrounding the game. More »

#butitmatchesthecolorofmytoilet! Prior to E3, as details of the next Wii were becoming clear, I had a dream that I could play the games on Nintendo's next console in my bathroom. More »

#culturesmash At the Tokyo Game Show, booth companions wear skimpy outfits. Some say it's degrading, some like it. Microsoft's booth companion outfits are cute and designed to show off each woman's best feature, giving them more confidence and making them comfortable. More »

#rentordie Starting Friday the denizens of grocery stores, Walmarts and gas stations nationwide can quickly rent video games from kiosks at $2 a day. More »

#amariohistorylesson As many of you know, the upcoming Super Mario game for the 3DS will be bringing back Mario's iconic Tanooki suit, the raccoon-like outfit that allowed Mario fly in Super Mario Bros. 3. Though the suit has returned, its functions have changed. As it turns out, Mario will not be able to fly this time around. More »

#dukeforever Halo studio 343 Industries is offering only the most authentic of Halo: Combat Evolved experiences at this year's Halo Fest, letting players go hands on with the Anniversary remake of the Xbox original with its original controller, the beastly gamepad nicknamed the "Duke." More »