Ian Walker

Ian is a passionate writer capable of handling both a steady stream of news reporting and regular editorial coverage. His interests range from Beyoncé to Street Fighter, making him a versatile addition to any workforce focused on the entertainment industry.

Kotaku •

Controversial Street Fighter Champion Banned From Several Major Tournaments

South Korean fighting game player Seon-woo “Infiltration” Lee revealed last night that he’s been barred from attending several major community events, including this year’s Evolution Championship Series (Evo). While the news came as a shock, many of those familiar with the highly accomplished competitor’s controversial past consider it a long time coming. Evo and Combo Breaker (arguably the second most important grassroots tournament in the fighting game community) contacted Lee via email to
Kotaku •

Texas Game Studio Will Help Employees Fleeing Anti-Trans, Anti-Abortion Laws

As large areas of the United States grow increasingly hostile toward trans folks and abortion rights, one Texas game studio CEO is promising to assist employees who want to leave the state should it come to that (h/t GamesIndustry.biz). “As a demonstration of our company values, today I am making this commitment to you,” Certain Affinity CEO Max Hoberman wrote in a letter to his employees. “If the state or province that you live in restricts access to what a majority of medical experts consider
Kotaku •

Superstar Final Fantasy XIV Producer’s First Square Enix Game Was Canceled

Naoki Yoshida, the man often credited with turning Final Fantasy XIV around after the MMO’s miserable launch and who is now in charge of bringing the upcoming Final Fantasy XVI to life, wasn’t always the superstar we know him as today. In fact, the higher-ups at Square Enix canceled Yoshida’s very first project at the company. Speaking with We Are Vana’diel, the official Final Fantasy XI community site, Yoshida discussed his experience during the 2003 merger between Square Co. and Enix Corpor
Kotaku •

It’s Stardew Valley Plus Spirited Away (Who Are We Kidding, You Already Clicked)

You can never have too many cozy games between all the big AAA launches, in my opinion, and that’s exactly what makes upcoming slice-of-life sim Spirittea look so inviting. The sophomore effort from indie dev Dan Beckerton, Spirittea was successfully crowdfunded back in 2020. At the time, Beckerton described Spirittea as reminiscent of games like Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon, and Animal Crossing as well as Studio Ghibli films Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro. Going by today’s sneak peek, I’
Kotaku •

PUBG Mobile’s Neon Genesis Evangelion Crossover Is Plain Weird

The latest PUBG Mobile event melds the handheld battle royale with anime masterpiece Neon Genesis Evangelion. Among other things, this means we get to see series mascot Eva Unit-01 perform silly dances, which is both delightful in an irony-poisoned sort of way and a serious indictment of the crossover trend’s culturally destructive rampage through gaming. “[P]layers will be able to grab a number of new exclusive Evangelion collaboration items, from the iconic character plugsuits to themed armor
Kotaku •

NYC Funding $2 Million Bachelor’s Degree Program In Game Design

City College of New York will begin offering a bachelor’s degree in game design this fall, New York City mayor Eric Adams announced today, making it the first public institution in the city with such a program. “New York City has always been the center of innovation, but it is time that New York City level up and finally become a leader in the digital gaming space,” Mayor Adams said. “It’s time to take advantage of all the talent we have here in New York by investing in the future of gaming.”
Kotaku •

Looks Like Alan Wake 2 Concept Art Is All We’re Getting For A While

After previously promising to show off Alan Wake 2 this summer, Remedy Entertainment explained today that folks will need to wait a little longer for more info on the sequel to the beloved (and recently remastered) 2010 thriller. “Everything is going really well,” Remedy creative director Sam Lake said via video message. “A great deal of the game is playable. But we’ve been talking the past couple of months, and we’ve come to a decision that we will not be showing anything big this summer.”
Kotaku •

Final Fantasy XIV Players Sent To In-Game Jail As Devs Mull Mod Controversy

At least two Final Fantasy XIV players pulled into an in-game jail by moderators while streaming the massively multiplayer online game this week. Many believe this was done to reprimand them for using third-party modifications to optimize HUD details for high-level raiding, a frequent pain point in the relationship between the community and Square Enix. Final Fantasy XIV raids are serious business, so much so that unofficial ”world’s first” races often spring up whenever Square Enix adds one
Kotaku •

VR Devs Really Want You To Feel Spiders On Your Face

Off the top of your head, what’s the best way to increase immersion while using virtual reality? Flawless, controller-free hand tracking? Direct brain integration? Maybe some kind of smell-o-vision? Nope, sorry, the answer we’re looking for is “literally being able to feel spiders crawling on your face.” That’s the goal, believe it or not, of the Future Interfaces Group, an “interdisciplinary research lab” at Carnegie Mellon University. Okay, their work isn’t just about spiders, but eight-leg
Kotaku •

Fortnite Cheat Seller Ordered To Pay Epic Games Undisclosed Damages

Last week, Epic Games won its lawsuit against a man accused of selling Fortnite cheats, GameSpot reports. According to documents filed to the Federal Court of Australia on May 2 and acquired by Kotaku, defendant Brandon Despotakis was found to have infringed on Epic Games’ copyright and violated both Fortnite’s end user license agreement and its terms of service. Despotakis, known online as BlazeFN, was taken to court by Epic Games in April 2021 for selling aimbots designed to help players c
Kotaku •

Final Fantasy XIV Mod Drama May Prompt Official HUD Upgrades, Director Says

As part of a larger blog reiterating the Final Fantasy XIV team’s disapproval of mods following their prevalence in a high-profile raid event, producer and director Naoki Yoshida promised to improve the massively popular game’s HUD to match the functionality of these unofficial tools. “We believe that people use [mods] to expand the HUD and display more information because they feel that existing functions are insufficient for tackling high-end duties,” Yoshida wrote. “In recognition of this,
Kotaku •

Listen To A Bunch Of EVE Online Nerds Go Wild Over An Official Excel Collab

During the keynote of this weekend’s EVE Fanfest convention in Reykjavik, Iceland, EVE Online creative director Bergur Finnbogason previewed an upcoming collaboration between the spacefaring MMO and Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet program in front of a crowd of dedicated fans. They ate it up. EVE Online diehards often joke that the complicated game is essentially “spreadsheets in space” due to the massive amounts of data one must contend with to play it seriously. So w hen Finnbogason took the
Kotaku •

First Overwatch 2 Patch Introduces Big Changes To Multiplayer Beta

Blizzard shared a lengthy list of Overwatch 2 patch notes today detailing changes it’s making to the first-person shooter a little more than a week into the player-versus-player mode’s closed beta. In addition to squashing bugs, such as crashes and easily abusable level geometry, Overwatch 2’s first beta patch introduces a variety of both buffs and nerfs for its various heroes. For example, jack-of-all-trades Soldier: 76 was apparently “over tuned” and “extremely mobile,” at least according to
Kotaku •

Genshin Impact Makes Its Devs One-Quarter Of A Bethesda Every Year

Genshin Impact raked in over $3 billion from mobile players in less than two years, according to the latest report from analytics firm Sensor Tower. The free-to-play game is on pace to earn its Chinese developer miHoYo an average of $2 billion—or more than one-fourth of a Bethesda (which sold to Microsoft for $7.5 billion in 2020)—every year. What do numbers even mean anymore? Even more astounding is the speed with which Genshin Impact was able to amass this fortune. It only took the Breath of
Kotaku •

Elden Ring Tool Simplifies Nightmare Of Choosing Best Magic-Slinging Gear

A new, player-created Elden Ring calculator allows you to easily figure out which seal or staff you should be using to sling magic, providing you with an optimum catalyst for your incantations and sorceries by simplifying one of the game’s most daunting math problems. While sometimes Elden Ring’s perplexities add to the experience, such as when it comes to deciphering the game’s mysterious lore, at other times it can turn equipping your character into a nightmarish process of cycling through ge
Kotaku •

Ninja Says He Wanted To Gift Evo $500,000 For Smash, But Nintendo Ghosted Him

Massive streaming personality Tyler “Ninja” Blevins claims that he tried to give the prestigious Evolution Championship Series fighting game tournament (also known simply as Evo) a bonus $500,000 for its Super Smash Bros. prize pool years ago, only to get shut out by Smash developer Nintendo. This was how Blevins recently clarified a 2018 tweet in which he promised to have “something cooking” for the competitive Super Smash Bros. community. At the time, the cryptic message stirred up a scene
Kotaku •

Florida Cops Killed Someone Over Shoplifted Pokémon Cards

Osceola County Sheriff’s Office deputies opened fire on four suspects believed to have stolen Pokémon cards and a pizza, Vice reports. One died after being transported to a hospital, while two others were charged with petty theft. Multiple units converged on a Target in Kissimmee, Florida last Wednesday night in response to a black Audi with obscured registration tags, according to an affidavit written by a Deputy Cole Miller and obtained by Kotaku. Upon spotting two teenagers—who were immed
Kotaku •

Final Fantasy VII Remake Mod Gives Barret A Classic Amano Makeover

A new Final Fantasy VII Remake mod gives party member Barret Wallace an updated aesthetic that hews closer to the pre-development concept art created by famed illustrator Yoshitaka Amano. Although Amano’s paintings are known for imbuing the iconic role-playing series with a touch of ethereal elegance, his remarkable artwork is rarely mirrored within the Final Fantasy games themselves. That’s not to say the franchise doesn’t contain beautiful imagery, but it hardly looks like Amano’s one-of-a-
Kotaku •

Final Fantasy XIV’s Newest Raid Is Blowing Everyone’s Minds

Final Fantasy XIV’s latest update saw Square Enix give serious players a new “ultimate” raid to conquer. The last few days have been a whirlwind as groups try to be the first to complete the raid, known as Dragonsong’s Reprise, and new developments concerning the potential revival of a dearly departed ally have only brought the community’s excitement to a fever pitch. Dragonsong’s Reprise revisits Heavensward, the 2015 expansion that’s still considered a high point in the Final Fantasy XIV stor
Kotaku •

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. As prolific Elden Ring hacker Zullie the Witch shows in her latest video, a specific section of rocky wall located below the Volcano Manor’s Temple of Eiglay (i.e. where most folks will fight their first Godskin Noble) is able to inflict a poisonous status effect. It’s easy t
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