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Activision Shareholders Approve Xbox Deal, But Wall Street Has Doubts

Shareholders at Call of Duty and Overwatch 2 publisher Activision Blizzard voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to approve a $69 billion sale to tech giant Microsoft. The deal gives golden parachutes to top execs at Activision, including embattled CEO Bobby Kotick. But despite gaming’s biggest acquisition ever moving one…

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Tiny Tina's Wonderlands Fixes Borderlands 3's Legendary Problem (This Changes Everything)

Ch-Ching! For Borderlands fans, that noise sets off an almost pavlovian response. A legendary gun has dropped. You’ve gotta be the first to get it. You heard that noise all the damn time in Borderlands 3. If you’ve been messing around in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, you may feel like it happens less. According to the…

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Call Of Duty Will Now Punish Cheaters By Making Everyone Else Disappear

Call of Duty: Vanguard has added a new tool to its arsenal of methods for trying to humiliate cheaters. The online shooter’s anti-cheat tech now includes a new “mitigation technique” called Cloaking that will make everyone but the cheater invisible, a punishment worthy of Black Mirror.

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15 Horror Games Available Now On Xbox Game Pass

A good scary game is often a thrilling experience. And if you are currently a Game Pass subscriber and in the mood to play something terrifying, creepy, or just downright spooky you already have access to some fantastic horror games for no additional cost. This is nice, because the only thing scarier than deadly…

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Nintendo Switch Sports Is A Worthy Successor To Wii Sports, Say Critics

The review embargo for Nintendo Switch Sports has lifted ahead of its April 29 launch, and critics’ impression is that the sports game is a spiritual return to Nintendo’s remote-waggling classic Wii Sports. Its predecessor was a cultural phenomenon, so the Switch version has massive shoes to fill. Is it more…

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Discord Is Getting Newfound Attention Now That Elon Musk Owns Twitter

We’ve entered the timeline where the world’s richest troll, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has bought Twitter. The deal, which ran him a cool $44 billion, will pretty much give the tech bro free rein over the Bird App. Now, he can “authenticate all humans” like he intends to, pushing us ever closer to our seemingly inevitable…

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New Disney Game Looks Perfect (For Disney Adults)

While my household is still in mourning over the untimely demise of Disney Infinity, the former movie studio and now cultural monopoly has today unveiled a new video game that, if Disney is your thing, is very much catering towards your things.

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Final Fantasy XIV's Director Is Asking You Not To Be Jerks

Final Fantasy XIV recently introduced a new 5v5 player-vs-player mode called Crystalline Conflict. And while for the most part it seems to be going just fine, and folks are happy with it, the team behind the game aren’t as happy with some people’s behaviour in the mode, and so have taken the time to address the issues…

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Streamers Aren't Liking Twitch's Potential Moneymaking Idea

Twitch is reportedly considering major changes to the monetization practices that streamers are upset about because the potentially lopsided percentages work out to pad Twitch’s bottom line.

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Broken Elden Ring Boss Is Back To Being Just Really Hard With Latest Update

The latest Elden Ring patch is all about fixing issues from the previous update, like a bug that turned the FromSoftware game’s most challenging boss into a constantly regenerating monster.

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The Latest Sims 4 Update Is Trolling Players With An Unexpected Demon

Picture your worst nightmare. Really allow yourself to round out each gruesome detail. Feel your heart race, then step back to reflect on what you’ve created. I’m guessing it’s not a Sim with a cell phone, but somehow, developer Maxis has managed to turn that innocuous image into a menace to Sims society.

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Let's 'Marie Kondo' Your Disgusting Elden Ring Inventory

I was shocked when I opened up my boyfriend’s Elden Ring inventory. Baffled and terrified, even. It was fully stocked in a way that only the cheese section of your fridge should be—there were multiples of the same armor sets, a despicable buildup of consumables and common items like herba and melted mushrooms, and a…

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Game Pass Hidden Gem Mixes XCOM, Worms, And Comic Book Vibes

What happens if the world gets too stupid, too overrun with people who don’t trust science or educators? Well, according to the recently released Research and Destroy, once folks stop trusting science and start believing in every wild theory they find online, the world is actually taken over by supernatural monsters,…

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The 15 Best Games For The Xbox Series X And S

A new console generation usually means a new library of games. That’s not exactly the case with Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, at least not yet. So far, there are few true next-gen exclusives. Instead, Xbox games are often released in both last-gen and next-gen versions.

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Dragon Age 4 QA Devs Say They're Unionizing Over Bad Pay And Covid Safety

The video game industry is currently undergoing a small but unprecedented wave of developer organizing. Last week it even reached the halls of famed RPG maker BioWare, where a group of QA contractors working on Dragon Age 4 revealed their intention to unionize. The two biggest reasons why? Bad pay and concerns over a…

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A Random Elden Ring Wall Is Mysteriously Poisoning Players

We all know Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki loves poisoning players, but apparently there exists an inconspicuous wall in FromSoftware’s latest game that can inflict a toxic status effect just as well as any swamp.

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Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands Players Pissed Over ‘Short’ DLC

Watching the news cycle around Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands for the past month has been like watching the news cycle of a game on fast-forward. You know how it goes: Game comes out. Gets positive reviews, fans praise it. DLC hits, is then slammed by fans. By now, it’s basically a framework. Only this time, the entire cycle…

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Sony Requiring Some Game Devs To Provide Free Trials To PS Plus Subscribers

When Sony combines PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now in June, its new most expensive tier will be $18 a month and include time-limited game trials. But most games don’t currently have such demos. To fix that moving forward, Game Developer now reports Sony will require all developers of games at a wholesale cost…

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Pokémon GO Fest 2022: Everything You Need To Know

Pokémon GO Fest 2022, the biggest event in the massive mobile game’s calendar, is confirmed for the 4th and 5th June this year. For the not-inconsiderable sum of $14.99, the weekend will include rotating habitats, Land Forme Shaymin, shiny debuts, and “customized special research,” where players can set their own…

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A Fight For Survival

Borys Kernytskyi is an artist from Ukraine.

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Classic Multiplayer Wolfenstein Game Launches On Steam 19 Years After Release

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory was released 19 years ago, and is one of the greatest multiplayer shooters ever to appear on the PC. Sadly, some younger readers may never have had the pleasure of playing it, as it had never been released on Steam. Until today!

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Our Favorite Cosplay From Romics 2022

With cosplay shows finally making a comeback not just in the US but internationally as well, we’re once again going to take a trip overseas and take Kotaku’s first ever look at Romics, a big convention that’s been running in the Italian capital for over 20 years now.

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Bethesda Adds Free Classic Elder Scrolls Games To Steam

Back in February, Bethesda confirmed that it was shutting down its proprietary PC game launcher and would move affected games back to Steam. Now, as we get closer to the May 11 shutdown, Bethesda has started adding some of its classic games to Steam. Some are arriving on Valve’s digital storefront for the first time,…

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Business Suit Blanka Is The Best Thing Fortnite’s Ever Done

Look, I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t have “give Fortnite props” on today’s to-do list. But if nothing else, I’m a purveyor of truth, and the truth is that the battle royale’s second Street Fighter collab looks surprisingly wonderful.

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Even The Studio Behind Pokémon Is Getting In On The 4-Day Work Week

The studio behind Pokémon is moving to an optional four-day work week. Game Freak announced the new “progressive” work policy on Tuesday, citing a desire to give employees more flexibility. The move comes as other studios are implementing similar policies, and is at odds with fans’ perceptions of a studio constantly…

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Pokémon GO Mega Evolution Revamp Might Finally Make It Useful

After years of bemusement, Niantic is finally overhauling Pokémon GO’s lackluster Mega Evolution systems, adding levels and bonuses to give players a reason to engage. This, they say, will make it easier to use the mightier monsters in the game, while adding more reasons to do so. It’s already rolled out in Australia…

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Elon Musk Buying Twitter Sucks, But Marginalized Game Devs Aren't Leaving

Yesterday, Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion dollars, and a lot of people in the video game industry are unhappy about it. Some are making Mastodon accounts, others are making jokes, while others are voicing their concerns about the Tesla founder taking over the platform. However, a sizable number of…

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Sega’s Pulling Standalone Sonic Games Ahead Of Sonic Origins’ Arrival

Sega plans to delist several classic Sonic re-releases due to their presence in the upcoming Sonic Origins, the Japanese developer announced via official press release this morning.

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Ubisoft Just Shut Down Online Services For 91 Games

To all the folks still playing Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 on Xbox 360, I’ve got some bad news: Ubisoft has turned off online services for that game and 90 other titles, including Far Cry 2, Splinter Cell, Just Dance, and more across multiple console and PC platforms.

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Borderlands Is Having Its Biggest Year Ever

The revival of a beloved spinoff. A film adaptation (whose cast makes no sense at all). A mainline entry (that, against all odds, feels astonishingly fresh). Yes, it’s safe to say Borderlands is back, and having its biggest year in a long time.

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