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 •

Official Kirby Café Invites You To Eat ‘Waddle Dee’s Fried Balls’

Among the various treats offered at Kirby Café locations in Japan, one that really stands out is a side known as “Waddle Dee’s fried balls.” Instead of making a joke, I’m just going to let that one sit with you for a while. Nintendo opened the first Kirby Café in Osaka, Japan in 2016, and since then, various locations have opened and closed according to the company’s whims and complications from the pandemic. I haven’t kept up with its menu changes over the years, but upon seeing a fantastic “d
Kotaku •

Final Fantasy XIV Players Are Once Again Free To AFK (And Dance) Forever

With lengthy wait times a distant memory, the Final Fantasy XIV team is ready to return to normalcy by letting folks stay logged in forever, no matter how long they go without, you know, actually playing the massively multiplayer online game. In July 2021, Final Fantasy XIV introduced a system that kicked players after 30 minutes of inactivity. This aimed to mitigate the game’s increasing server congestion ahead of the highly anticipated Endwalker expansion’s launch that December. Sadly, it d
Kotaku •

No Man’s Sky Gets Space Whales, Roguelike Adventuring In Latest Update

The next No Man’s Sky expansion is all about space whales. Well, okay, there’s a whole new, roguelike-style expedition for players to tackle too but come on. Space whales, baby. Today’s update, called “Leviathan,” sees the immense No Man’s Sky universe get a little bigger with the introduction of the aforementioned megafauna and a challenging mission that players will need to overcome together. Losing your one life means starting the whole thing over again with a new loadout, but the further in
Kotaku •

Yoshitaka Amano Makes Batman Look Like Final Fantasy And I’m Here For It

A future issue of DC Comics’ Detective Comics (that’s Detective Comics Comics’ Detective Comics for those of you keeping score at home) will feature a variant cover by none other than prolific Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano, the company’s August 2022 catalog announces. The beautiful Amano artwork of a brooding Batman holding a woman many assume to be enemy and love interest Talia al Ghul will grace the cover of Detective Comics #1093 when it hits comic book store shelves on August 23. D
Kotaku •

Human Woman Kissing Simulator Sonic ‘06 Relisted In Xbox 360 Store

After over a decade away, it appears as if 2006’s Sonic the Hedgehog (or Sonic ‘06 to all the savvy hedgehog connoisseurs out there) is once again available on the Xbox Marketplace. And it’s only $5, if you still happen to have an Xbox 360 hooked up to your television for whatever reason. (h/t Fanbyte) While universally panned at launch after a rough development cycle, Sonic the Hedgehog is considered something of a cult classic today. It’s a little like how people watch The Room because of i
Kotaku •

Looks Like Some Classic Games On PlayStation Plus Will Have Crappy PAL Framerates

As the new PlayStation Plus service launches around the world, folks have reportedly discovered a major downside to the subscription’s classic games: Many of them use versions released in PAL regions rather than the NTSC versions many of us are familiar with. The news first surfaced this afternoon thanks to Twitter user The_Marmolade, who booted up Ape Escape for some monkey-napping only to find the game ran at the lower framerate inherent to PAL releases. Some responses pointed out this may
Kotaku •

Sony Is Being Sued For Gender Discrimination At PlayStation Again

A former PlayStation employee is suing parent company Sony for a second time over what the lawsuit describes as “gender-based discrimination and gender-based harassment” after a similar legal action was dismissed in April. (h/t Axios) In the five years and change that Emma Majo worked for PlayStation as a financial systems business analyst, the new class action complaint filed on May 20 explains, she encountered an environment of “systemic sexism” at the company that included lower pay for fe
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
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