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Diablo Immortal Won’t Launch In Some Countries Due To Loot Box Laws
31.5.2022
Well, here’s some bad news for people who live in Belgium or the Netherlands and are excited to play Diablo Immortal, Blizzard’s upcoming free-to-play dungeon crawler out June 2 on PC and mobile devices. It turns out, due to local loot box laws, that Blizzard’s next action RPG won’t be released...
Xbox Boss Says He Will Recognize Raven Software's Union After Acquisition Closes
26.5.2022
In today’s internal all-hands meeting with Xbox Game Studios employees, Head of Xbox Phil Spencer said that he would recognize Raven Software’s union. This came after the QA testers at Raven voted to form the first labor union at a major studio.Read more
EA Tells Devs It Won't Take Stand On Abortion Rights, Encourages 'Healing Circles'
25.5.2022
Electronic Arts won’t be joining some other big game studios in publicly supporting abortion and transgender rights, Kotaku has learned. Asked about it during a May 24 company-wide town hall meeting, the gaming publisher told staff it couldn’t take a stance on every public issue and that “being...
Activision Blizzard Devs Demand Breastfeeding Protections And Other Reforms
25.5.2022
10 months after a California lawsuit alleged widespread sexual harassment and discrimination at Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard, employees at the company don’t feel like it’s made the necessary changes and have created a worker committee to demand further reforms. Chief among them...
The PS5's Worst Game Is Taking A Long, Hard Look At Itself
23.5.2022
Babylon’s Fall fell indeed, and now the live-service loot slasher’s next season is going to last twice as long as Square Enix had originally planned. After promising players everything was just fine a couple months ago, Platinum Games is now planning to “re-evaluate” its future content plans.Read...
Report: EA Looking To Sell Or Merge
21.5.2022
The video game market is consolidating like never before, and Electronic Arts is scrambling like everyone else. The Battlefield and FIFA maker recently pursued a merger with NBCUniversal, and also held potential acquisition talks with Disney, Apple, and other companies, according to a new report...
Lawsuit: Blizzard Lets Minors ‘Gamble’ On ‘Worthless’ Hearthstone Card Packs
19.5.2022
Blizzard is facing a proposed class-action lawsuit over card packs sold to minors in Hearthstone, its popular World of Warcraft-themed trading card game. A parent in Arizona claims his child purchased hundreds of dollars worth of the cards without realizing how rare it is to get good cards out...
Layoffs At EA Austin Following Split With FIFA
18.5.2022
Electronic Arts is laying off a ton of customer service staff at its Austin office, according to internal emails viewed by Kotaku. One source familiar with the decision told Kotaku that as many as 100 employees could be affected, many of whom supported live operations on FIFA 22. Going forward,...
Fall Guys Gets Free-To-Play Overhaul Next Month
17.5.2022
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...
Activision Blizzard's New Diversity Game Tool Comes Across Terribly
14.5.2022
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...
Nintendo Showcase Standout Gunbrella Has The Best New Video Game Name Of 2022
12.5.2022
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Lawsuit Claiming Steam Gives Valve Too Much Power Is Moving Forward After All
11.5.2022
A U.S. district judge has decided that an antitrust lawsuit against Valve over how it operates and uses the Steam platform can move forward. The company suing Valve, Wolfire Games, alleges that the Half-Life and Portal developer uses its digital storefront and its huge amount of control over the...
EA's FIFA Series Loses Its Name After Nearly 30 Years
10.5.2022
Next year’s FIFA won’t be called FIFA anymore, EA announced Tuesday. The mega sports franchise is parting ways with soccer’s international governing body and will be renamed EA Sports FC, but EA promises nothing else will change.Read more
By The Way, Take-Two’s CEO Profits From All Your GTA Online, NBA 2K Microtransactions
7.5.2022
Microtransactions in games like Grand Theft Auto Online have become big business for video game publishers. And it’s likely this won’t be changing anytime soon. New details spotted in a recent contract extension for Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick explain that the CEO will earn a big bonus if more...
Outriders, Square Enix's Answer To Destiny, Didn't Turn A Profit In Its First Year
6.5.2022
According to a recent operations report from the development studio People Can Fly, the online loot shooter Outriders didn’t make any profit by the end of 2021. Read more
The 24 Karat Gold Nintendo Wii Is Finally Up For Sale
6.5.2022
In 2009, THQ pulled a publicity stunt by covering a Nintendo Wii in 24 karat gold and trying to get it delivered to Queen Elizabeth II. Her Majesty never actually got her hands on the console, but now, after over a year of auction hijinx, you might be able to.Read more
Activision Has The Population Of A Small Town Working On Call Of Duty Games
6.5.2022
The Call of Duty machine can never stop. It must endlessly push forward, through lawsuits, controversies, and layoffs. To stop would mean…well, we don’t know, because it never has. And to help keep the machine going, Activision now has over 3,000 human souls working tirelessly on the publisher’s...
I Like Bandai Namco's New Logo
5.5.2022
Last year, Japanese publisher Bandai Namco announced that it was doing away with its logo, the same one it had used since the two formerly separate companies had merged all the way back in 2006.Read more
Now New York City Is Suing Activision Blizzard
4.5.2022
Activision Blizzard is facing (what feels like) its 8,583,129th lawsuit, as first reported by Axios. This one’s from New York City, and alleges that longtime CEO Bobby Kotick raced to find a buyer for the mega-publisher he has been leading for 30 years to explicitly avoid consequences for turning...
Square Enix Will Hold On To A Few Western-Made Franchises
3.5.2022
Yesterday, Square Enix announced that it was selling its Western studios, like Crystal Dynamics—and much of the intellectual property (IP) connected to those studios, like the Tomb Raider franchise—to Swedish holding company Embracer Group for $300 million. But while this move seems to signal...