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The people obsessed with uncovering gaming’s deepest, darkest secrets For some, playing a video game to completion isn’t enough. They want to reveal the secrets behind its creation.
This article was originally published March 2016. For some, playing a video game to completion isn’t enough. They want to reveal the secrets behind its creation. Turning their fevered gaze towards cut content and cancelled games, these individuals assemble in online communities, their goal being to uncover fresh information about our favourite games and the abandoned titles we never got to play. Unseen64 is one such community. Started by a group of Italian friends in 2001, the website has grown into an international venture, staffed by volunteers from all around the globe. These volunteers are responsible for scouring the web for news about unfinished and rejected games, to archive for…
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How Breath of the Wild plays with our nostalgia Nintendo's masterpiece re-invents the Zelda series, and part of that is growing up alongside its players.
The making of Until Dawn The story behind one of the best horror games of recent times.
Don’t share Watch Dogs 2’s (very real) vaginas or Sony will ban you (NSFW!) Turns out there are vaginas in Watch Dogs 2, but if you share a picture of them then Sony will ban you.
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ESA doxes over 2,000 journalists and content creators attending E3 The accidentally released excel sheet contains names, e-mails, phone numbers, and addresses.
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has doxxed over 2,000 E3 media attendees by accidentally posting a list containing their sensitive personal data. The excel sheet, first revealed by independent game journalist Sophia Narwitz, contains the names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and private residences of media attendees ranging from journalists to content creators. It has been available online and linked to on a publicly viewable page on ESA’s website since the most recent E3 in June, and only 404’d after Narwitz contacted the ESA to inform them of the privacy breach. We can confirm that at the time of posting, the list remains publicly available on archive websites. According to a…
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Critics bash ‘Rambo: Last Blood’ for its portrayal of Mexico and ‘latinx’ characters Critics are once again completely out of touch with viewers.
Kids say the darndest things, especially after spending $2,570 on microtransactions Yep, it sure “costed the money.”
Gambling culture across time and place
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Diablo creator David Brevik spills the beans on Blizzard A noticeably drunk Brevik joins increasing number of former employees speaking out about the issues at Blizzard.
There’s no one else in the world who would know more about the company than the executives who used to work there, and they are now speaking out about the issues at Blizzard. The studio has come under fire for its treatment of its fans following the announcement of Diablo Immortal — a mobile game that no one in the Diablo community asked for. As I described in my previous video, the studio has come into the habit of burning its bridges with the community by focusing on making money and less on delivering quality products. Blizzard appears to have lost its way, and the reason why has been elaborated…
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Dead or Alive 6 is too hot for the puritans Get the burka.
A guide to playing games stoned 2008's finest high times in gaming.
WATCH: Twitch streamer accidentally burns down apartment while reviewing lighter Japanese Twitch streamer Yoshihiro Mazda killed a neighbor in blaze of stupid that eventually engulfed a total of three apartment buildings.
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Inside the troubled development of Star Citizen After five years, more than $124 million in fan funding and nothing close to a finished game, Star Citizen has become a lightning-rod for controversy. What’s really been going on?
For the past seven months, I’ve been talking to the people who have been making Star Citizen. This includes its directors, a number of anonymous sources who’ve worked on it, and the man who drives the whole project: Chris Roberts. From the outside, Star Citizen appears to have been wildly successful; to date, it has raised more than $124 million from passionate fans. The money has allowed its developer, Cloud Imperium Games, to open studios around the world and employ more than 325 talented developers. Behind the closed doors of CIG’s studios, however, it’s been far from an easy ride, according to staff. They have all faced a unique challenge:…
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10 Xbox things to remember on Xbox’s 15th anniversary Did you know the console was almost called 'Odyssey of the Mind'? Really.
The craziest Pokémon Go stories so far Spontaneous friendships, Diglett dick pics, illuminati conspiracies, dead bodies, and all the other crazy Pokémon Go stories so far.
Woo-Hoo! The making of Stranglehold "There were definitely moments that made you feel like you're in a John Woo movie."
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How an activist subverted the Mega Man franchise Leaked chat logs vindicate Mighty No. 9 fans.
Gamers are right to temper their expectations for new games. Given how disappointing some of the most overhyped titles, like the recent No Man’s Sky, have been, the cynicism is warranted. But no one expects a game they’re looking forward to playing to become subverted with notions of “social justice.” Action games like Mega Man have never imparted any sort of political message apart from overly simplistic notions of good versus evil—standard video game stuff. Fans enjoyed these games not just for their gameplay, but for their simplicity in storytelling and straightforward design. When Mighty No. 9 was announced in mid-2013 as a spiritual sequel to the Mega Man series…
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NeoGAF shuts down following sexual abuse allegations against owner Shut down today following allegations of sexual assault against its owner, Tyler Malka.
Rotten Tomatoes deletes 50k Captain Marvel reviews to ‘fight trolls’ Negative review bombing out, positive review bombing in.
Here’s how to play WoW Classic on your phone Do you guys not have phones?!!
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The No Man’s Sky leak is a darkly amusing outragefest A leaker’s early review dashed hopes for those who expected No Man’s Sky to be the gaming messiah.
No Man’s Sky fans, to put it lightly, have been quite spirited surrounding the release of the innovative space explorer. When the game’s creator, Sean Murray, previously announced delays, he was bombarded with death threats along with a Kotaku reporter who wrote about it. No Man’s Sky fans have projected ungodly levels of hype onto a game they knew little about, as the game appears to offer a completely unique procedurally generated gameplay experience, something extremely rare for major releases. And now with a little over a week before the game will finally be available to the hordes of rabid fans, leaked copies are creating all sorts of drama. More death threats, denial, a whole…
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A joke, a media storm, and a destroyed life… Is ‘Magic: The Gathering’ the next Gamergate? A male internet personality made a mean joke on Twitter about a woman.
You can now play 10,000 Amiga games in your browser for free, on archive.org Take a nostalgia trip with some real retro classics.
5 great all time classic games you can play online
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Mortal Kombat has kept a secret for 24 years That's... a long time to keep a secret. Huh.
Mortal Kombat, the game from 1992, had hidden a secret menu from us all until late in 2015. Now that’s some pretty subtle secret-keeping skills for a series so utterly lacking in subtlety. It’s a developer menu present on Mortal Kombat, as well as its sequels Mortal Kombat 2, 3 and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, accessed on the arcade versions by inputting a sequence of button presses. The long-hidden dev menus allows such fun things as checking the arcade machine is running all nice and funky-like, a ‘hello’ shout-out screen and the ability to watch each and every character’s ending at the push of a button. I likely would have…
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69 things you need to do in GTA before you die So you think you’re done with Liberty City? Think again.
The Many, Bizarre Emotions of FIFA 15’s Emotion Engine Thanks to FIFA 15’s new Emotional Intelligence, all 22 players on the pitch can now employ 600 new emotional reactions. It's... not always the most natural-looking thing.
Mint condition Super Mario Bros. 3 cartridge breaks all records—sells for $156k Super Mario Bros is once again the most expensive video game ever sold. It's-a more money than sense!
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A conspiracy of silence: How NDAs are harming the games industry Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) have long been a fact of doing business in video games - but their enforcement can have wide-ranging, negative effects.
Big business likes to talk on its own terms, in video games as elsewhere. Announcements about upcoming games are delivered according to strict marketing schedules, while the biggest publishers only allow their developers to discuss their work with both the press and the public within very specific timeframes. To prevent information leaks outside of approved timeslots, most big developers require their employees to sign non-disclosure agreements, usually referred to as NDAs. These legal contracts prohibit developers from external discussion of a project without prior permission. Giving an unsolicited interview, letting slip information on social media, or even discussing a project with friends over drinks, can potentially result in punitive action against the…
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69 things you need to do in GTA before you die So you think you’re done with Liberty City? Think again.
5 pixel art games you need to play right now Who doesn't love breezing through a colorful, simplified world that resembles something from their childhood?
Why video game movies fail as adaptations What are movie makers doing wrong?
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Ubisoft security fail: up to 58 million email addresses and passwords stolen No credit card details, however.
Ubisoft are the latest victims in a string of hacking attempts over the last six months or so. This one was successful in stealing the usernames and passwords of possibly all 58 million customers. The good news is that credit card details and other similar sensitive information is not stored on the server that was hacked, so private information remains safe. From Ubisoft support: Security update regarding your Ubisoft account – please create a new password We recently found that one of our Web sites was exploited to gain unauthorised access to some of our online systems. We instantly took steps to close off this access, to begin a thorough…
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Kotaku is getting raked over Laura Kate Dale’s “retarded” fake news piece And now everybody is throwing everybody else under the bus.
Intel CPUs have a major security flaw, and fixing it causes huge performance hit Affects all of the company’s modern CPUs.
Game journos: devs must force players to make the ‘right’ moral choices “If game designers are not willing to de-power players then their ‘moral choice’ mechanics are reduced to basically meaningless ‘play style.’”
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ESRB accidentally releases nearly 1,000 Real ID e-mail addresses They were privacy advocates, too.
Recently, Blizzard made it known what their intentions were for the implementation of their new Real ID system, which in all truth sounded pretty cool. That is, except for one thing: removing anonymity from users on their forums. Fortunately, after taking up broomsticks and storming the proverbial gates of Blizzard HQ, the company decided on a different course of action. With that, it was over as quickly as it began… Or so we thought. During the course of these events, a number of people took their grievances to the Electronic Software Ratings Board. The ESRB listened, and responded to those who took the time to contact them. The problem? Whoever…
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Twitch competitor Stream.Me gone after threats against owners’ kids Ethan Ralph: "They just decided it wasn't worth it."
Snapchat is getting into video games When you think of Snapchat, the last thing you’re going to think about is video games. But!
id Software releases Quake III Arena source code id Software releases all source code for the classic PC shooter under GNU General Public License and hopes you'll make something cool.
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