Wersching at WonderCon in April 2022Photo: Daniel Knighton (Getty Images)
Actor Annie Wersching, who played the role of Tess in Naughty Dog’s The Last Of Us video game, has died at the age of 45.
Wersching was diagnosed with cancer in 2020 but continued to act throughout her illness and treatment, appearing in series like Star Trek: Picard. As Deadline reports, her husband, Stephen Full, said in a statement:
There is a cavernous hole in the soul of this family today. But she left us the tools to fill it. She found wonder in the simplest moment. She didn’t require music to dance. She taught us not to wait for adventure to find you. ‘Go find it. It’s everywhere.’ And find it we shall.
She is perhaps best known for her role as Renee Walker in the seventh and eights series of 24, though she also made regular appearances on Bosch and Timeless as well. Wersching is survived by her husband and three sons.
Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann wrote, “Just found out my dear friend, Annie Wersching, passed away. We just lost a beautiful artist and human being. My heart is shattered. Thoughts are with her loved ones.”
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As you can see in the video below,Wersching didn’t just provide Tess’ voice, but also acted out the role for motion capture as well
This Go Fund Me is for them. It’s so Steve can have time to grieve without the pressure of needing to work. So he can be daddy to Freddie (12), Ozzie (9) and Archie (4) as they navigate the future without their mom, without sweet Annie. It’s so they can continue to go to baseball games (Go Cardinals!) take music lessons and play little league. It’s to help pay for college. It’s so Steve can continue Annie’s tradition of filling the house with every life-sized balloon that’ll fit in the car for birthday mornings. It’s to give them time to navigate life as a family of four without the burden of paying medical bills or funeral expenses. It’s so they can continue to live life in a way that they know would make Annie proud.
Everyone loved Annie. Everyone. But however much we loved her, she loved her boys more. Let’s help take care of them for her.
Hi-Fi Rush, a game built around the concept of pure joy, was notable last week for two things. One, it’s really, really good! And two, it achieved that rarest of video game feats: a successful surprise release.
By surprise I mean absolute surprise. One minute nobody knew the game even existed, the next it was available to download and play on Xbox and PC. In this, The Year Of Our Lord 2023, how often does that happen…to anything? Anywhere? Never, that’s how often!
As a result the game doesn’t feel like a breath of fresh air, it feels like gust blowing us off our feet, and while I don’t want to undersell any aspect of the game itself when talking about its success, let’s be honest here: this game feels so fresh not just because it’s an amazing game, but because it wasn’t wrung dry for 12 months by a drawn-out marketing campaign.
What I’m about to say here isn’t meant to directly disparage anyone working in video game marketing: you have jobs to do selling video games, and in the vast majority of cases that involves people doing very good work. Whether it’s putting together blockbuster trailers or just chatting with (potential) fans on social media, it’s a tough job and one that in the majority of cases I completely understand and empathise with, especially since the system within which they’re operating—selling games on shopfronts obsessed with preorders and wishlists—demands it.
But I’m not responsible for making a single advertising campaign. I, like you, am on the receiving end of thousands of them, all at once, everywhere we look. From previews on big sites to YouTube to Twitter to Discord anyone interested in video games on the internet is under siege from the second we log on to the second the log off. Here’s a thing, preorder it, learn more about this thing, preorder it.
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I’ve covered this in my Deathblood saga pieces previously, but video game marketing always has a certain predictability to it. Not in terms of specific aspects of their campaign—a AAA blockbuster obviously has a different marketing budget to a small indie release—but in the way that they can so often be guaranteed to leave us feeling exhausted.
It’s not enough that we are shown a game’s world, genre and premise. We have to be told each major character’s backstory. Shown a lore explainer for the world. We’re told how many lines of dialogue are in the script, how many thousands of hours it might take to finish, who every voice actor is. We’re conditioned, and in many cases expected, to by the time of release be fans of a game that we haven’t even played yet. Which, of course, is the whole point.
Screenshot: Hi-Fi Rush
Imagine if, instead of appearing out of nowhere, Hi-Fi Rush had been subjected to a traditional Bethesda marketing campaign. Picture seeing it revealed at The Game Awards back in December 2021, its bright light dimmed by the weight of the bigger, more expensive games it was revealed alongside. Imagine being subjected to Chai’s worst lines as part of a character reveal trailer on YouTube, instead of warming to his Fry-From-Futurama-esque charms over the course of the game’s opening hours. What if instead of the game being able to take so much delight in revealing its cast and world on its own terms we’d had that spoiled for us already by a Meet Project Armstrong documentary?
It would have sucked! The game itself would still have been great, of course, but so much of the joy of discovery that has accompanied its release, a modern day schoolyard buzz, would have been lost. To be clear, like I’ve said already, I don’t say any of this to shame any particular worker, studio or agency involved in marketing any other video game. The trees aren’t the problem here. It’s the forest.
Which is what makes Hi-Fi Rush so special. It’s one of the only games that could get away with this. Note I haven’t called for an end to video game marketing here, or said more games should try this, because the former would be pointless (it’s a big forest!) and the latter would be reckless advice. As much as Hi-Fi Rush feels like a remastered GameCube game, and unlike anything else out there, it was developed by a noted AAA studio and published by Bethesda, then released on Xbox Game Pass so people could try it for “free”. It was blessed to be perhaps the only possible combination of style, scope and pedigree that could afford to even try this, let alone hope to get away with it.
So I don’t want to say Hi-Fi Rush should be an example. I just want to say we should all treasure this game for what it is, and how it came to us, because in both cases the circumstances are as perfect as we could ever have hoped them to be, and we may never see them align like this again. Surprises are nice, but few are as nice as a good video game surprise.
Things haven’t been going great for Xbox recently. Microsoft is facing stiff resistance in its attempt to acquire Activision Blizzard. It released hardly any big exclusive blockbusters last year. And it just cut over 10,000 jobs last week, including many senior developers at Halo Infinite studio 343 Industries. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer tried to remain upbeat and do damage control on each of these points and more in a new interview with IGN.
“Every year is critical,” he said. “I don’t find this year to be more or less critical. I feel good about our momentum. Obviously, we’re going through some adjustments right now that are painful, but I think necessary, but it’s really to set us up and the teams for long-term success.”
This week captured both the peril and promise facing Xbox right now. On Tuesday, Microsoft announced a drop in net-income of 12 percent for the most recent fiscal quarter compared to the prior year. Xbox gaming hardware and software were down by similar percentages, and Microsoft said nothing about how many new subscribers its Game Pass service had gained since it crossed the 25 million mark exactly a year ago.
Then on Wednesday Microsoft provided a sleek and streamlined look at its upcoming games in a Developer Direct livestream copied right from the Nintendo playbook. Forza Motorsport was seemingly quietly delayed to the second half of the year, but looked like a beautiful and impressive racing sim showpiece. Arkane’s co-op sandbox vampire shooter Redfall got a May 2 release date. Real-time strategy spin-off Minecraft Legends will hit in April. And to cap things off Tango Gameworks, maker of The Evil Within, shadow-dropped Hi-Fi Rush on Game Pass, a colorful rhythm-action game from left field that’s already become the first undisputed gaming hit of 2023.
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“2022 was too light on games,” Spencer confessed in his IGN interview. 2023 shouldn’t be thanks to Redfall and Starfield, Bethesda’s much-anticipated answer to the question, “What if Skyrim but space?” But both of those games were technically supposed to come out last year. Meanwhile, Hi-Fi Rush, like Obsidian’s Pentiment before it, is shaping up to be a critically acclaimed Game Pass release that still might be too small to move the needle on Xbox’s larger fortunes.
Spencer remained vague when asked how successful these games were or their impact on Game Pass, whose growth has reportedly stalled on console. “I think that the creative diversity expands for us when we have different ways for people to kind of pay for the games that they’re playing, and the subscription definitely helps there,” he said.
Hi-Fi Rush, Redfall, Starfield, and a new The Elder Scrolls Online expansion due out in June are also all from Bethesda, which Microsoft finished acquiring in 2021. The older Microsoft first-party game studios have either remained relatively quiet in recent years while working on their next big projects, or, in the case of 343 Industries, were recently hit with a surprising number of layoffs.
Following news of the cuts last week, rumors and speculation began to swirl that 343 Industries—which shipped a well-received Halo Infinite single-player campaign in 2021, but struggled with seasonal updates for the multiplayer component in the months since—was being benched. The studio put out a brief statement over the weekend saying Halo was here to stay and that it would continue developing it.
Image: Bethesda / Microsoft
Spencer doubled down on that in his interview with IGN, but provided little insight into the reasoning behind the layoffs or what its plans were for the franchise moving forward. “What we’re doing now is we want to make sure that leadership team is set up with the flexibility to build the plan that they need to go build,” he said. “And Halo will remain critically important to what Xbox is doing, and 343 is critically important to the success of Halo.”
Where Halo Infinite’s previously touted “10-year” plan fits into that, however, remains unclear. “They’ve got some other things, some rumored, some announced, that they’ll be working on,” Spencer said. And on the future of the series as a whole he simply said, “I expect that we’ll be continuing to support and grow Halo for as long as the Xbox is a platform for people to play.” It’s hard to imagine Nintendo talking about Mario with a similar-sounding lack of conviction.
It’s possible Microsoft’s continued struggles with some of its internal projects is partly why it’s so focused on looking outside the company for help. Currently that means trying to acquire Activision Blizzard for $69 billion and fighting off an antitrust lawsuit by the Federal trade Commission in the process. Microsoft had originally promised the deal to get Call of Duty, Diablo, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush would be wrapped up before the end of summer 2023. That deadline’s coming up quickly, even as the company continues offering compromises, like reportedly giving Sony the option to continue paying to have Activision’s games on its rival Game Pass subscription service, PS Plus.
Spencer told IGN he remains bullish on closing the deal, despite claiming to have known nothing about the logistics of doing so when he started a year ago. “Given a year ago, for me, I didn’t know anything about the process of doing an acquisition like this,” he said. “The fact that I have more insight, more knowledge about what it means to work with the different regulatory boards, I’m more confident now than I was a year ago, simply based on the information I have and the discussions that we’ve been having.”
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla – The ConvertsImage: Ubisoft / Kotaku
This year the Assassin’s Creed franchise turns 15 years old. In that time, the franchise has expanded into multiple games, mobile spin-offs, books, movies, shorts, and more. It’s a big, complicated universe that involves historical conspiracies, shadowy cults, and ancient aliens. And those ancient aliens, the Isu, have a complex language, and it’s that language that seems to have frustrated an artist working on a newly released Assassin’s Creed comic.
Since 2007’s original Assassin’s Creed adventure, each installment in the franchise has added more and more lore. At this point, it’s a batshit-wild universe and one key part of the madness are ancient beings, later named the Isu, who were technologically advanced, lived on Earth like gods long ago, and were wiped out 77,000 years ago following a war with ancient humans who they’d enslaved. Anyway, the Isu created all sorts of gizmos and trinkets that, thousands of years later, are still being sought after by humans obsessed with power. And many of these items are covered in the Isu language, which was largely untranslated until 2021, when fans finally cracked it.
But apparently working with this language is a pain in the ass, as seemingly revealed by a bit of text in the recently released comic book, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla – The Converts. At one point, we see a close-up of an ancient Isu tablet of some kind which is covered in the ancient aliens’ language. And translated, part of the text reads says:
“If somese as esplasi how to write this shit it would be muc appreiated”
It’s pretty easy to see what this person was likely trying to say using the Isu language, even if it has a few mistakes. The message was likely meant to say:
“If someone can explain how to write this shit it would be much appreciated.”
This funny little message was first spotted by the Assassin’s Creed super fans over at Access The Animus—the same people who first cracked the Isu language a few years back. They also spotted “multiple bits of incorrect Isu language” in the comic, suggesting the artists or writers involved weren’t given enough information or direction about the Isu language, hence the mistakes and frustration.
Kotaku has reached out to Ubisoft, the comic book writer, and the artists.
While some fans had a good laugh at this angry Easter egg, others were upset that the creators behind the comic book didn’t consult fan guides and translation tools before working on the book. However, it should be noted that it would be very weird for an official Ubisoft-approved Assassin’s Creed comic to rely on fan translations, assuming the people behind the comic even knew of that work. (Which would explain why they included this Isu Easter egg at all: Maybe they didn’t expect anyone else to read it!)
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Personally, as a big fan of Assassin’s Creed and its wild lore, I totally get how frustrating it must be to try and tell stories within that universe. It’s fun to experience the mess from the outside looking in, but working on it is likely a pain in the ass at times and I don’t begrudge an artist for sneaking in a little jab at how annoying and absurd it must be.
What would you do if a random stranger asked to see your feet? Probably chuckle awkwardly and start walking faster. Streamer Nyy did neither. She had a better idea, and her Twitch chat will never be the same again.
“Feet please,” asked Twitch user sissy6668. It’s a common refrain in online chats, but one that’s rarely answered. Internet DJ Nyy, formerly known as Nyykage, shockingly obliged mid-way through a set on yesterday’s livestream. The next thing the chat knew, Nyy had thrown a leg up on her desk with a foam lobster flip-flop on her foot. “This what you’re looking for?” she asked right before the beat dropped.
The Twitch chat went wild, and folks on Twitter did too once Nyy clipped the moment and set it loose into the briny waters of the internet. The nicknames quickly proliferated—lobster floppers, flopsters, crustacean 3000s—as did people’s amazement. “THIS WAS A MASTERPIECE!” responded one person. “The absolute definition of never let them know your next move, a plo[t] twist at every turn! IT SENT ME LMAO.”
Vivid colors and deep blacks It’s Oscar season which means it’s time to binge all the nominations before the big day. Why not enjoy these pieces of art on a new TV from our friends at Samsung?
What can I say, people are weird about feet. Especially on Twitch. Searches for “Streamers’ feet” have a combined 73 billion views on TikTok. There are YouTube videos entirely about rating different streamers’ feet. Some streamers have even gotten banned for showing their feet.
That’s allegedly what happened to Thai Twitch streamer JustKethJustKeth. She claimed Twitch banned her for three days earlier this month for flashing her foot. She was letting viewers pay to spin a wheel that would make her do certain things, including show off her stumps. “It’s just a meme bruh,” she tweeted at the time.
Though as Dexerto points out, Twitch does have strict rules against things like “fetishizing behavior” and selling sexual content on the platform, which is vague as hell but, well, welcome to Twitch.
Nyy, on the other hand, managed to turn the entire thing on its head. “The Lobster Floppers gifted from my mod were not always loved but in the short span of one whole day they have become family,” she told Kotaku in an email. “Warding off bad vibes, feet inquiries, and most importantly, providing effortless fashion.”
No doubt the flopster fan cams won’t be far behind. “Everyone needs a pair of Crustacean 3000’s in their closet come 2024,” Nyy wrote. “Lukewarm trolls can not thrive when you already possess the weirder arsenal.”
According to a report from The Hollywood Reporter, Waller-Bridge is attached to the live-action show as a writer, though there’s no word on whether or not the Fleabag star will be in front of the camera at this time. Alongside writing, she’s set to act as executive producer alongside Ryan Andolina and Amanda Grenblatt, who both recently left Amazon to found their own production company, and have worked out further deals with Bezos and co. to work on projects like the Tomb Raider series.
If you’re unfamiliar with Waller-Bridge’s work, she is known throughout the internet for her role as the titular character in Fleabag, a two-season series (also produced by and streaming on Amazon) which is also one of the few examples we have of what perfect television looks like.
Fleabag is two seasons of perfect television.Image: Amazon
You want to watch two short self aware seasons about a woman trying to claw her way out of emotional detachment and grief? It’s streaming on Prime. Don’t thank me, because it will ruin you for days. Come for Waller-Bridge’s sharp writing and performance, stay for Andrew Scott as the Hot Priest.
Vivid colors and deep blacks It’s Oscar season which means it’s time to binge all the nominations before the big day. Why not enjoy these pieces of art on a new TV from our friends at Samsung?
This series will be the third time Tomb Raider has seen a live-action adaptation, with Angelina Jolie and Alicia Vikander portraying Lara Croft in two separate film series. At the moment, it remains unclear if this show will be based on the classic Tomb Raider games or the survival-oriented settings of the reboot series.
While the Amazon adaptation is in the works, developer Crystal Dynamics is also in the midst of developing a new Tomb Raider game. The studio was recently acquired by The Embracer Group after Square Enix sold it and other studios off in an effort to downsize and shift its focus onto other things like blockchain.
The Pokémon Company will print its first new Kadabra card in over 20 years. According to a report by PokéBeach, the Pokemon Card 151 set due out in June will feature the psychic spoon-bender alongside the series other original Pokémon, something that would have previously been blocked by illusionist Uri Geller’s lawsuit accusing Kadabra of being based on his own likeness.
PokéBeach (via IGN) said it was able to confirm Kadabra’s return after viewing a leaked sell sheet for the upcoming set. While on its face it seems obvious that number 64 would be included along with the 151 other original Pokémon, Kadabra has been excluded from the card game since the early 2000s. That’s when Geller, best known for performing conjuring tricks ostensibly revolving around physic abilities, such as bending spoons, first discovered Kadabra and tried to take Nintendo to court over the Pokémon’s similarities to his act.
While the most obvious example was Kadabra’s signature bent spoon, its name in Japanese, Yungerer, also bore clear similarities. Geller reportedly took special issue with the Team Rocket Kadabra card which featured “Evil Yungerer.”
“I’m very angry about this,” he told the BBC back in 2000. “I wouldn’t have given permission for an aggressive, and in one case evil character to be based on me. This is not even anything to do with the old question of if I’m a magician or a real psychic. It’s straight theft of my persona.”
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Geller didn’t stay angry though. Following years of failed lawsuits, pleas from fans, and even his own granddaughters, he eventually relented. In 2020 he sent a letter to Nintendo giving permission for Kadabra to continue being used. Pokémon company CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara wrote back at the time to thank him. Geller even started teasing Kadabra’s possible return to the card game last year.
“Look, I want to thank the Pokémon fans who reached out to me over the last [few] years,” he told PokéBeach in a voicemail yesterday. “Including the ones from PokéBeach, who kept contacting me nonstop. So basically, it was you and my granddaughters that got me to change my mind.”
The illusionist went on:
Now we can all see Kadabra reunited with the original Pokémon in the card game this summer. I love you all. And I admit, totally open and honest. I was a fool. It was a devastating mistake for me to sue Pokémon. [Kadabra] was basically a tribute to Uri Geller. But it’s back now. Forgive me. I love you all. Much love and energy.
Two days ago, Bungie turned off the Destiny 2 servers while the studio looked into a problem that had players apparently losing progress on in-game challenges. This outage lasted a bit longer than everyone expected, with the free-to-play loot shooter remaining offline for nearly 20 hours. So what happened? Today Bungie pulled back the curtain and explained exactly what went wrong and why it had to roll back the game, erasing a few hours of folks’ quest progress in the process.
On January 24 at around 2:00 p.m., Bungie tweeted that it was taking Destiny 2 offline while it investigated an “ongoing issue causing certain Triumphs, Seals, and Catalysts to lose progress for players.” A few hours later, at 5:51 p.m., Bungie tweeted that it had possibly found a fix for the issue and was testing it, but was unable to specify when or if Destiny 2’s servers would come back online. Nearly four hours later, Bungie tweeted for the last time that night, announcing that Destiny 2 would not be playable that evening. Nearly 12 hours later, at around 9:55 a.m, Bungie announced it had finally solved the problem and servers would be coming back online following a hotfix. The nearly 20 hours of downtime had some players worried about the game’s health, and its future. After years of bugs and broken updates, it was really starting to feel like the seven-year-old shooter was being held together with duct tape.
So what happened during those 20 hours and why was the game down for so long, seemingly with little warning? Bungie has explained what broke, why, and how it was fixed in its latest blog post. And surprisingly, the developer is more transparent than you might think, going into technical details of the issue.
According to Bungie, shortly after releasing a previous update for the game (Hotfix 6.3.0.5) players began reporting that many Triumphs, Seals, and catalysts had vanished. Bungie realized that this was being caused after it moved some “currently incompletable” challenges into a different area of the game’s data. To do this, Bungie used a “very powerful” tool that lets the studio tinker with a player’s game state and account. Apparently, due to a configuration error, Bungie accidentally “re-ran an older state migration process” used in a past update. Because of this error, the tool copied old data from this past update into the current version of the game, which basically undid some players’ recent in-game accomplishments
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“Once we identified that the issue resulted in a loss of player state,” wrote Bungie, “we took the game down and rolled back the player database while we investigated how to remove the dangerous change from the build.”
After creating a new patch that removed the mistaken change the issue was fixed, and following some testing, Bugnie deployed the update. However, as a result of this patch, all player accounts had to be rolled back a few hours before the troublesome update went live. This means any player progress made between 8:20 and 11 a.m. on January 24 was lost. Any purchases made during this time got refunded, too.
While it sucks that the game was down for so long and that the team was forced to spend what sounds like many late hours trying to fix their mistake, it’s refreshing to see a developer be so open and honest about what happened and how it was fixed. In a time when games feel buggier than ever and players are fed up with delays, outages, and broken updates, it’s smart to pull back the curtain and show everyone just how hard it is to make, maintain, and sustain video games as complex as Destiny 2.
There is a bottomless dress-up box filled with things that people look for in a partner. You might prefer someone who is funny or empathetic, I consider myself lucky to have ended up with someone who never had an AJR phase. And I’m sure, out there somewhere, there is a person who wouldn’t want to date anyone who doesn’t demonstrate their proficiency in C++ within the first 40 seconds of knowing them. And for that person, this Tinder user who made an entire lo-fi video game about dating them is likely the one.
Games journalist Imogen Mellor first spotted the game after its creator Super Liked (that’s an extra, extra like for the folks at home who can’t recall the horrors of online dating) her profile on Tinder.
“I swear to God,” she said on Twitter, “someone just Super [Liked] me on Tinder and they’ve made a game about dating them????? and you can actually PLAY IT???”
Unlike other 32-bit indie games, though, this one is tailored to fit its creator’s dating needs exactly.
“It’s a browser game that contains info about the creator, their hobbies, passions, food preferences, a little video of foxes playing in their garden, a 3D model of their home, and a compatibility test,” Mellor tweeted. “I’m floored.” She didn’t respond to Kotaku’s request for comment in time for publication.
Providing strangers with a 3D model of your home feels like a security risk to me, personally, but I guess it’s important to always map out your exits when you’re dating a gamer. This one, in particular, “worked on an AI that was capable of getting to grandmaster in Starcraft II,” Mellor said, and she hasn’t “swiped left or right simply out of brain freeze on if I just want to talk to him.”
“This person must be very specific with the type of women they’re pursuing,” she said. “Actually, the game suggests as much with a full list of things they’re looking for in a person.” Well, it’s clear that we all learned something from this. Online dating makes everyone act in very healthy and normal ways. Good luck out there.
Today Microsoft held its Developer Direct presentation, focusing on a number of new games coming to Xbox, PC, and Game Pass. We got a fresh look at some anticipated titles, as well as a neat little rhythmic surprise from the developers of The Evil Within. But enough chatter, let’s get into what Microsoft showed off today.
Minecraft Legends
We first learned of Minecraft Legends last year. A spin-off of the ultra-popular sandbox survival game, Legends is, perhaps unexpectedly, a multiplayer action-strategy game. Legends will have both a narrative co-op mode, as well as a PvP mode with procedurally generated environments, which is much of what we saw today. Check it out here:
Microsoft
Forza Motorsport
The folks over at Turn 10 showed off some wildly pretty footage of the upcoming Forza Motorsport, which is expected to arrive this year. This presentation focused on the finer details of Motorsport’s visual flair, including highly detailed dirt, damage, and “battle scars” that’ll build up on your digital cars, as well as extra detail added to the game’s dynamic time of day and trackside vegetation. Cars are also expected to get more realistic physical behaviors, with improvements to the suspension and exhaust.
Surely we’ve all thought “why can’t we take down corporate overlords in a brightly colored action game with rhythmic action cues? Oh, and made by the folks who did The Evil Within.” Well think no more: Hi-Fi Rush was today’s biggest surprise, putting players in the role of an aspiring rock star with a rhythmic robot arm who kicks butt on the beat with a flying V guitar…which makes sense as that’s about all a flying V is good for. It looks like good fun, and by the way, it’s coming out today! On Game Pass, even.
Arkane, the studio that brought us Dishonored, Prey 2017, and Deathloop is currently working on Redfall, an open-world, sandbox FPS with four-player co-op. With some friends, you’ll wield appropriately gothic firearms to take down oodles of blood-sucking vampires. Arkane describes the setting as its largest world yet. While it does look very much like Left 4 Dead with vampires, today’s gameplay dive showed off Arkane’s immersive sim strengths, meaning there are a variety of ways to take on foes and objectives, with some uncertain outcomes. Redfall is expected on May 2 of this year.
Microsoft / Bethesda
The Elder Scrolls Online: Necrom
ESO continues on with a new expansion: Necrom. Expect a brand new class, the Arcanist, and some terrestrial and extraplanar adventures as there’s a new peninsula to explore in the mushroom kingdom of Morrowind. You’ll also get to go for a jog in Apocrypha, one of the Elder Scrolls’ lovely hellish realms. Coming on June 5 and June 20 for PC and consoles, respectively.
Microsoft / Bethesda
While last year was a little lacking in terms of exclusives for Xbox and Game Pass, with High On Life being perhaps the most notable, 2023 is certainly looking a bit more action packed. Bethesda’s much-hyped, much-delayed Starfield is also supposed out, in June no less. Think they’re gonna stick it this time?
Yesterday, the news dropped that Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland had not only been dropped from the hit TV show by Adult Swim, but also that he was resigning from High on Life studio Squanch Games, which he co-founded. This all comes as Roiland faces two felony domestic abuse charges from 2020. Instead of leaving Adult Swim high and dry as it faces the challenge of carrying on Rick and Morty without the man who voiced a great many of its characters, a sizeable chunk of fans took it upon themselves to submit mock audition tapes for the now-vacant roles of Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith.
Prior to the shitstorm of Justin Roiland news revelations, Roiland voiced a multitude of voices in Rick and Morty and in last year’s Game Pass hit, High on Life. Back in 2018, while Rick and Morty was in its third season, Adult Swim forged a long-term deal with creators Dan Harmon and Roiland for 70 additional new episodes of the adult animated series, according to Deadline. Following yesterday’s news, The Hollywood Reporter has said that Roiland’s voice roles will be re-cast and Dan Harmon will remain the sole showrunner through season 10.
Like the old adage of uncertainty breeding opportunity, Rick and Morty fans are throwing their hat in the ring by submitting audition tapes for its titular characters. Unlike the “Get Schwifty” episode of Rick and Morty (fuck me for remembering that), candidates by and large aren’t taking the auditions seriously, which is honestly pretty on brand for Roiland’s vocal performances. Here are a couple of standout performances that would make Cromulon nod in approval.
Now that I’ve sent my editor an email for financial compensation for the emotional damage writing this article has dealt me, I’d like to earmark two alternative solutions for Rick and Morty’s “lack of a lotta voiced roles” situation.
Twitter user Shinimomi suggested Rick and Morty take a page out of the prolific comedy anime series Pop Team Epic’s book by having random celebrities voice characters every episode. That way Adult Swim can keep things fresh by having a pool of notable actors (preferably those who aren’t alleged sex pests) rotate throughout the show’s next “100 Years.”
Warhammer 40K: Darktide released on PC late last year, a dark and chunky take on Left 4 Dead set in Games Workshop’s grim, distant future. It was OK! Had its problems, but was OK. Those problems have persisted into 2023, though, and so the developers are shelving an Xbox version of the game while they get to work fixing them.
In a statement released earlier today, Fatshark say they set out to “create a highly engaging and stable game with a level of depth that keeps you playing for weeks, not hours”, but “fell short of meeting those expectations”.
As a result, they’re not only delaying “seasonal content” for the PC version, but will be delaying the release of the game on Xbox Series X|S as well.
OPEN LETTER ΤΟ OUR PLAYERS
We take enormous pride in our ability at Fatshark to deliver a game that millions can enjoy. This was what we set out to do with Warhammer 40,000: Darktide to create a highly engaging and stable game with a level of depth that keeps you playing for weeks, not hours.
We fell short of meeting those expectations.
Over the next few months, our sole focus is to address the feedback that many of you have. In particular, we will focus on delivering a complete crafting system, a more rewarding progression loop, and continue to work on game stability and performance optimization.
This also means that we will delay our seasonal content rollout and the Xbox Series XIS launch. We will also suspend the upcoming releases of premium cosmetics. We just couldn’t continue down this path, knowing that we have not addressed many feedback areas in the game today.
Thank you for playing and providing feedback. We really appreciate it. It has and will continue to help shape the game we love.
Martin Wahlund CEO & Co-Founder of Fatshark
I didn’t think the PC version was that bad! Sure it had problems, but online games from smaller teams like this often do. Then again smaller teams often don’t have the resources to do everything at once, so if this is what they want to do with what they’ve got then this is what they’re going to to do with what they’ve got!
An inappropriate Overwatch 2 game mode reappeared, but it’s not one to get excited about. The mode, titled “sexual harassment simulator,” was played enough times that it appeared as one of the most popular over the weekend for some players, according to PC Gamer, which spotted the reappearance just before Blizzard quickly pulled it down.
Another “sexual harassment simulator” was discovered in October 2022, but both tasked players with knocking down Overwatch 2‘s female heroes (like Mercy and Widowmaker) while playing as the cowboy Cole Cassidy and repeatedly crouching over their bodies, apparently, as PC Gamer reported, with the word “raping…” until the character in question is labeled “pregnant” as an AI-controlled Torbjorn supposedly fills the role of the baby. This is disgusting on so many levels it’s not even funny, especially because players are forced to play as Cassidy, previously known as McCree, the same name as the ousted Activision Blizzard developer who took part in the controversial “Cosby Suite” meetups.
A screenshot of the custom mode was posted to Overwatch’s official subreddit by user Joyolo13, who simply asked: “What in god’s name?”
“Lol I remember seeing this every day in [Overwatch 1],” said Redditor sw1nky. “Can’t say I’m surprised it’s still around, [to be honest].”
“McCree is back in the game I guess,” said user FoulfrogBsc.
Kotaku was unable to find the custom game mode in Overwatch 2 as it appears Blizzard took the “sexual harassment simulator” offline—for now. So, it seems the company is aware that such a mode exists but might be having a hard time preventing it from reappearing in the game.
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“Inappropriate or explicit content has absolutely no place in our game,” a Blizzard spokesperson told PC Gamer when the outlet asked about the first version of the mode last year. “We immediately removed the user-created game mode once made aware of its existence. We are continually working to improve automatic filters to prevent inappropriate user-created content, and manually removing any that are not caught by the system.”
Kotaku reached out to Activision Blizzard for comment.
While this is at least the second time the “sexual harassment simulator” has popped up in Overwatch 2 specifically, players noted that a similar mode existed in some form in the original Overwatch game. At the time, players posted PSAs to warn the community about the offensive content. Of course, not all player-created game modes are this egregious. But it is concerning that this issue has come up more than once within a few months.
Holiday Matsuri is one of the coolest cosplay shows on the North American calendar. Taking place in Florida in December, the location means that instead of shivering inside a convention centre somewhere freezing their asses off, attendees are instead free to hit the pool, and the timing means we get to see a bunch of neat holiday-themed takes on costumes.
The 2019 edition (which we covered in early 2020) was one of the last before the pandemic hit, and while the event returned in 2021 it wasn’t until the most recent show that things really got back in their stride.
In this gallery you’ll find both a music video and collection of photos of the 2022 event, all taken by Mineralblu. Each cosplayer’s social media, character and series details are watermarked on the image.
THIS IS SWIMSUIT COMIC CON HOLIDAY MATSURI 2022 HOLMAT COSPLAY MUSIC VIDEO VLOG ANIME EXPO FLORIDA
Genesis 9, a major fighting game tournament, took place over the weekend. There were stellar combos and massive upsets as the supermajor event for Super Smash Bros. Melee and Ultimate concluded on January 22. Unfortunately, while the tournament was underway, one of Canada’s top Kazuya players, Michael “Riddles” Kim, sparked some heated discourse in Ultimate’s community around “top player privilege” and “ego problems” when he threw his controller after losing a match.
Considered one of the best Kazuya and Terry mains in Canada, Riddles is ranked ninth in all of North America. A member of the esports organization Team Liquid, Riddles has placed in the top 10 at just about every tournament he’s competed in, with his last first-place win being at the November 2022 Path to Glory tournament in Saskatchewan where he took home approximately $11,000 alongside the top spot. In short, the Super Smash Bros. community sees Riddles as goated. So, knowing he was entering Genesis 9, a California tournament stacked to the brim with top-tier talents such as Steve player acola and Marth main MKLeo, his ardent fans and interested onlookers were expecting him to perform. He did, but not to the level he, or the game’s community, might’ve hoped for.
Riddles found himself in the losers’ bracket after losing a close set against Palutena player Chase. Riddles would win the next two matches in that bracket, only to wind up facing off against France’s Lucina main, Nassim “Leon” Laib. The bout started heavily in Riddles’ favor. However, Leon had Riddles’ number on speed dial, as Leon switched to Chrom and gave Riddles little room to breathe.
It all came to a head when, in the last bout, Leon absolutely bodied Riddles in spectacular fashion. Riddles lost that match. After sitting in his chair for a while, the frustration clearly visible on his face and his opponent no longer on screen, Riddles threw his controller down hard before leaving the arena.
Folks were perplexed by the upset as Riddles was a top seed, meaning he was expected to place pretty high. Leon, however, is ranked 77th. The odds were ever in Riddles’ favor, as evidenced on the faces of those around the two players. Aside from congratulating Leon on his victory, most people were stunned by what happened. There were a few taking pictures of Riddles sulking in his chair, but most of everyone else in the immediate vicinity was shooketh.
ScreenKO
It’s this brief moment that has ignited the Super Smash Bros. community into discoursing about popping off in a professional setting.
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“You throw the controller,” one tweeter said to Riddles in all caps. “Do you know how much you make people suffer? You lost [and] got outplayed by a neutral character. You just cheese people at 0 so [fuck] off.”
“It’s called holding people accountable,” another tweeter said. “Something this community needs more of actually.”
“It doesn’t matter if he is humble, he still had that moment,” a third tweeter said. “If you give him a pass now, 9 times outta 10, it’ll happen again. Just stop fam lmao. Everyone has those moments, we get it, but shrugging it off like this just shows why top player privilege is a thing.”
The comments on the above YouTube video aren’t much better, with some agreeing Riddles “has no right to be salty or rage” and that he’s “a little baby” who needs to “man up.” Others laughed at the incident, while a few folks memed his name, calling him “Shittles” instead. One person even said Riddles has “insane ego problems” for reacting this way. Sheesh.
This is because Riddles mains Kazuya Mishima, one of Tekken’s protagonists, the 81st combatant part of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s Fighters Pass Vol. 2, and a notorious character in the game’s scene. Kazuya is a combo-heavy fighter in Ultimate, primarily relying on his electric wind god fist to stun his opponents and rack up some heavy damage. Kazuya, and this stun move especially, have been thorns in the community’s side, with Ultimate players regularly asking for Kazuya (as well as Steve from Minecraft) to get banned from tournament use. In short, Riddles receives a lot of hate because of the character he plays, and his loss to Leon and the resulting explosion on camera, was an excuse to pile on—to the point that Riddles ended up deactivating his Twitter account.
Kotaku reached out to Riddles for comment.
In Twitter DMs with Kotaku, Leon said he was both afraid of and motivated by Riddles, ready to face him in the Genesis 9 competition. Leon didn’t anticipate beating Riddles, though, saying he was “very surprised and shocked” to do so with his secondary character, Chrom. He also wasn’t totally surprised by Riddles’ reaction to the upset after the fact, although he didn’t completely agree with his opponent’s behavior.
“[Riddles’ reaction was] completely [unwarranted] in any kind of big competition. It’s easy to see that,” Leon said. “Throwing your own controller to [release] frustration isn’t the best move, but it concerns only him and himself. As long as he respects his opponents (which was the case with me), there is nothing very disgusting [about what he did]. I would be sad and frustrated to get out of the tournament that early, too.”
Not everyone is dragging Riddles for the way he popped off at Genesis 9. Multiple top players, from former competitor Yonni to big-name player Justin Wong to Moist Esports’ Aaron Wilhite, defended Riddles’ actions. It’s kind of ironic when you think about it, as a few days before Genesis 9 kicked off, an Italian Smash player was banned from tournaments going forward after literally slapping his opponent during a livestream. Riddles, on the other hand, took his frustration out on an inanimate object and announced he would take a long break in his Discord. I’m not entirely sure what the community wants from Riddles, or top players in general, but asking that they be robots and show no emotion just ain’t it. I mean, I still occasionally throw my controllers because video games make me angry. It’s human nature, right? At least Riddles didn’t take it out on his competitor.
The Transportation Security Administration’s No-Fly List is one of the most important ledgers in the United States, containing as it does the names of people who are perceived to be of such a threat to national security that they’re not allowed on airplanes. You’d have been forgiven then for thinking that list was a tightly-guarded state secret, but lol, nope.
A Swiss hacker known as “maia arson crimew” has got hold of a copy of the list—albeit a version from a few years ago—not by getting past fortress-like layers of cybersecurity, but by…finding a regional airline that had its data lying around in unprotected servers. They announced the discovery with the photo and screenshot above, in which the Pokémon Sprigatito is looking awfully pleased with themselves.
like so many other of my hacks this story starts with me being bored and browsing shodan (or well, technically zoomeye, chinese shodan), looking for exposed jenkins servers that may contain some interesting goods. at this point i’ve probably clicked through about 20 boring exposed servers with very little of any interest, when i suddenly start seeing some familar words. “ACARS”, lots of mentions of “crew” and so on. lots of words i’ve heard before, most likely while binge watching Mentour Pilot YouTube videos. jackpot. an exposed jenkins server belonging to CommuteAir.
Among other “sensitive” information on the servers was “NOFLY.CSV”, which hilariously was exactly what it says on the box: “The server contained data from a 2019 version of the federal no-fly list that included first and last names and dates of birth,” CommuteAir Corporate Communications Manager Erik Kane told the Daily Dot, who worked with crimew to sift through the data. “In addition, certain CommuteAir employee and flight information was accessible. We have submitted notification to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and we are continuing with a full investigation.”
That “employee and flight information” includes, as crimew writes:
grabbing sample documents from various s3 buckets, going through flight plans and dumping some dynamodb tables. at this point i had found pretty much all PII imaginable for each of their crew members. full names, addresses, phone numbers, passport numbers, pilot’s license numbers, when their next linecheck is due and much more. i had trip sheets for every flight, the potential to access every flight plan ever, a whole bunch of image attachments to bookings for reimbursement flights containing yet again more PII, airplane maintenance data, you name it.
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The government is now investigating the leak, with the TSA telling the Daily Dot they are“aware of a potential cybersecurity incident, and we are investigating in coordination with our federal partners”.
If you’re wondering just how many names are on the list, it’s hard to tell. Crimew tells Kotaku that in this version of the records “there are about 1.5 million entries, but given a lot are different aliases for different people it’s very hard to know the actual number of unique people on it” (a 2016 estimate had the numbers at “2,484,442 records, consisting of 1,877,133 individual identities”).
Interestingly, given the list was uploaded to CommuteAir’s servers in 2022, it was assumed that was the year the records were from. Instead, crimew tells me “the only reason we [now] know [it] is from 2019 is because the airline keeps confirming so in all their press statements, before that we assumed it was from 2022.”
You can check out crimew’s blog here, while the Daily Dot post—which says names on the list include members of the IRA and an eight year-old—is here.
This may come as a surprise to the players who abandoned the game long ago and assumed this time had come already, but Crystal Dynamics and publishers Square Enix have announced the impending end of online support for Marvel’s Avengers.
After two-and-a-half years and introducing twelve of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, following Update 2.8 on March 31, 2023, we will no longer add new content or features to Marvel’s Avengers. All official support for the game will end on September 30, 2023.
Even after official support ceases on September 30, 2023, both single- and multi-player gameplay will continue to be available…
…As a show of our appreciation for our community, starting March 31, 2023 we will make all the game’s Marketplace, Challenge Card, and Shipment cosmetic content available to all players for free. Every single Outfit, Takedown, Emote, and Nameplate from the Marketplace, Challenge Cards, and Shipments will be free for all players from this date onwards if you own a copy of the game.
Gifting the full library of Marketplace cosmetic content is a way to thank our community by letting everyone experience the breadth and depth of content in Marvel’s Avengers.
We know this is disappointing news as everyone in our community has such a connection to these characters and their stories. We’re so, so grateful that you came on this adventure with us. Your excitement for Marvel’s Avengers – from your epic Photo Mode shots, to your threads theorizing who our next Heroes would be, to your Twitch streams – has played a large part in bringing this game to life.
We hope you continue to play and enjoy Marvel’s Avengers. We can’t thank you enough for your support and for being part of our super team.
As the note says, this doesn’t mean the game is disappearing off the internet entirely. You’ll still be able to play it, even in multiplayer; there just won’t be any further updates or even technical support for it after September 30.
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If you’re a player and want to see the specifics of what’s shutting down when, and what this means for individual updates, you can check that out here in a series of charts and FAQs. One of which contains the deeply funny reminder that Spider-Man must remain a PlayStation exclusive, even in death.
This week, all at once, a perfect storm of deals, discounts, and sales has hit the Nintendo Switch eShop. Batten down the hatches, open up your wallets, and check out some of these limited-time deals, including massive savings on numerous Lego titles, Mortal Kombat games, and hits from Capcom, Ubisoft, and Bandai Namco.
Before we go any further, just note that—with the exception of Ubisoft’s Mario + Rabbids—there aren’t any Mario, Zelda, or Kirby games on sale. Instead of first-party discounts, all of these sales are focused on third-party publishers and developers. But there are still plenty of great games to grab up for cheaper than usual, even if Mario and Luigi aren’t part of it.
Here are some of the best deals I spotted cruising through the various sales currently happening on the eShop. While all of these sales are ending at slightly different times, you more or less have until the end of the month (or a few days past that) to take advantage of these discounts.
Now, with that out of the way, here are the best deals I found so far. (The figures in parentheses are the normal prices.)
A few hours ago, Xbox CEO Phil Spencer sent out a company-wide email to all full-time employees under Microsoft’s gaming divisions. A copy of the email was shared with Kotaku by a current Xbox employee, we have confirmed its authenticity, and the full text has been transcribed below:
This has been a difficult week across Microsoft, and here, inside our teams. Now that many of the 1:1 and team conversations have happened, I want to take a moment to reiterate the message that you heard from your leaders.
This is a challenging moment in our business, and this week’s actions were painful choices. The Gaming Leadership Team had to make decisions that we felt set us up for the long-term success of our products and business, but the individual results of those decisions are real. I know that hurts. Thank you for supporting our colleagues as they process these changes.
Over the coming weeks we will have many opportunities to connect and answer your questions, including the Monthly Gaming Update next week for teams who attend that meeting, and I am in close contact with teams at ZeniMax to provide support. The GLT and I are committed to being as transparent as we can. Moving forward with ambiguity is challenging, but I am confident that together, we will get through this difficult moment in time.
Xbox has a long history of success thanks to the work you do in service of players, creators, and each other. Your work is so deeply appreciated and valued in these times of change and is integral to our business momentum. I am confident in our future and proud to be part of this team, but also conscious that this is a challenging time and I want to thank you for everything you do here.
Phil
On January 18, Microsoft laid off 10,000 employees across the company. These layoffs included gaming studios such as 343 Industries, The Coalition, ZeniMax Media, and Bethesda Game Studios. Xbox has struggled to release first-party titles last year, and is under tremendous pressure to ship flashy blockbuster titles such as Starfield. Some of the people who have lost their jobs include senior talent, and occurred a year after the publisher scourged up the pocket change to purchase Activision Blizzard for $70 billion. Kotaku has reached out to Microsoft for a statement, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
“This feels like something you send out on obligation,” wrote a current employee at Xbox over text messages to Kotaku. “I seriously doubt any of those monthly gaming updates or other meetings are going to do anything to make anyone feel better.”
The tech workers’ union CODE-CWA put out a statement on January 19, stating that their representatives have been in contact with Microsoft. The company “recognizes its obligation to bargain over any proposed layoffs of CWA members at ZeniMax.” The ZeniMax union intends to negotiate on “alternatives to layoffs.”
