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No One’s Getting Laid In Starfield, Apparently

March 17, 2023Kotaku

Starfield, Bethesda Game Studios’ Skyrim-but-in-space RPG, finally has a firm September 6 release date. A June 11 presentation will give us a closer look at the game that has over 1,000 planets, but something you might not have expected to learn before then is just how sexless Starfield will be. By sexless, I mean, truly sexless because the game has none whatsoever.Announced at E3 2018, Starfield is easily Bethesda’s most anticipated game to date since it’s the first new IP the developer has dropped in decades. And despite a delay or two, the space-faring RPG will also mark Bethesda’s first…

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Twitch CEO Steps Down After 16 Years After Controversy-Filled Year

March 16, 2023Kotaku

Emmett Shear is no longer the boss of Twitch. After 16 long punctuated by various controversies, the co-founder and only CEO the Amazon-owned streaming platform has ever known announced he’s stepping down to spend more time with his family. “With my first child just born, I’ve been reflecting on my future with Twitch,” Shear wrote in a blog post on Thursday. “Twitch often feels to me like a child I’ve been raising as well. And while I will always want to be there if Twitch needs me, at 16 years old it feels to me Twitch is ready to move…

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Twitch CEO Steps Down After 16 Years

March 16, 2023Kotaku

Emmett Shear is no longer the boss of Twitch. After 16 long, controversy-filled years, the co-founder and only CEO the Amazon-owned streaming platform has ever known announced he’s stepping down to spend more time with his family. “With my first child just born, I’ve been reflecting on my future with Twitch,” Shear wrote in a blog post on Thursday. “Twitch often feels to me like a child I’ve been raising as well. And while I will always want to be there if Twitch needs me, at 16 years old it feels to me Twitch is ready to move out of…

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Stranger Things Actor Says She’s Streaming On Twitch More Due To Industry Sexual Harassment

March 10, 2023Kotaku

Grace Van Dien is a streamer and an actress. You probably know her best as Chrissy Cunningham on Stranger Things, but she’s also starred in movies like What Comes Around and V For Vengeance. Two days ago, she told her Twitch viewers that she “turned down acting projects and decided to stream more” because she has experienced sexual harassment in the film industry.

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Here’s Every Single Video Game Remake You Can Play In 2023

March 9, 2023Kotaku

This year is completely stuffed with video game remakes and remasters, like the gaming world is an overgrown hermit crab stubbornly holding onto a little cone-shaped shell. While you might wish to be born again every month or so, video games aren’t afraid to rehash what they are again, and again. To make sorting through games’ self-assured recapitulation easier, though, I put together a list of every major remake and remaster you’ll be able to play in 2023. Some of these games are already available and feature only small changes, like the updated Persona 3 Portable or sharpened Kirby’s Return…

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This AI Can Make Endless Super Mario Bros. Levels With Just A Few Words

February 16, 2023Kotaku

The technology we casually refer to as “artificial intelligence” is suddenly everywhere. It’s used to “create” art, dialogue and voice, text, even video games! It’s nigh impossible to escape as we enter a dystopian future in which generative technology seeks to threaten entire livelihoods (including those of Twitch streamers). But sometimes, despite how fraught the discourse around AI can be, you’ll discover something kinda cool. So, let me introduce you to MarioGPT, an artificial intelligence tool that creates classic Super Mario Bros. levels via text prompts.

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Twitch Star xQc Horrifies World With Messy, Smelly Room (Again)

February 16, 2023Kotaku

There are only so many hours in the day and when you’re a capital-S streamer, most of them are dedicated to grinding battle pass levels in whatever new live-service game just dropped or reacting to all the latest internet drama to thousands of chatters. As such, there isn’t always time to clean up after yourself, and you’re left wading through the detritus of your own sloppiness like a pig in a pen. This is exactly the case for Twitch star Félix “xQc” Lengyel, who grossed viewers out in a recent livestream after showing how “disgusting” his messy, odd-smelling room has…

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Call of Duty Sexists Tell Twitch Streamer To Make Sandwiches, And She Does

February 14, 2023Kotaku

It’s 2023, and FPS gaming hasn’t really improved for anyone who sounds like a woman over voice chat. No matter how skilled they are, it seems inevitable that some fuckwad is going to tell the player to make a sandwich. One female Call of Duty streamer decided to respond to shitty opponents by stepping away from her game to make an actual sandwich.

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The Aftermath Of Twitch’s Deepfake Porn Scandal

February 10, 2023Kotaku

You know Sweet Anita. You’ve seen her streams, stumbled across her Twitter account, or watched clips of her on TikTok. She’s likable—the kind of person you could watch do anything, even as she clicks her tongue, whistles, and tells you fuck off. You’ve probably had her curse you out on repeat in a video playing in the background while you wash the dishes. She’s got nearly 2 million followers on Twitch, thanks in large part to her candor and her reputation as “the Tourette’s streamer.” With such a massive internet presence, Sweet Anita has gone to great lengths to craft…

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Nintendo Says New Games Are Still ‘Under Development’ For 7-Year-Old Switch

February 10, 2023Kotaku

Never count Nintendo out. Or for it to do the most obvious and sensible thing. With the Switch entering its seventh year after becoming the third best selling console ever, you’d think it would be the perfect time for a successor. But there’s still no Switch 2 or Switch Pro in sight, and Nintendo is telling investors the console still has new games in development and plenty of room to grow.After announcing worse than expected sales, Nintendo was asked repeatedly by investors in a Q&A this week if the Switch is dead, and Nintendo repeatedly said it is not. In…

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Nintendo Says New Games Are Still ‘Under Development’ For 6-Year-Old Switch

February 10, 2023Kotaku

Never count Nintendo out. Or for it to do the most obvious and sensible thing. With the Switch entering its sixth year after becoming the third best selling console ever, you’d think it would be the perfect time for a successor. But there’s still no Switch 2 or Switch Pro in sight, and Nintendo is telling investors the console still has new games in development and plenty of room to grow.After announcing worse than expected sales, Nintendo was asked repeatedly by investors in a Q&A this week if the Switch is dead, and Nintendo repeatedly said it is not. In…

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Don’t Sleep On Keke Palmer’s Amazing Twitch Streams

February 9, 2023Kotaku

Another big-name celebrity has found their way to Twitch. Keke Palmer, the long-time actress and TV personality who most recently starred in Jordan Peele’s Nope, has become a full-fledged livestreamer on Amazon’s platform after getting her channel set up earlier this month.

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Oh No, ChatGPT AI Has Been Jailbroken To Be More Reckless

February 8, 2023Kotaku

If you’ve spent any time toying with or reading about ChatGPT, one of the internet’s latest obsessions and topic of contentious conversation concerning artificially intelligent software, then you know the service has specific restrictions on what it can and cannot say…until now. Some clever users have found a way to bypass ChatGPT’s strict list of no-talk subjects, tricking it into adopting a new persona, DAN, which stands for “Do Anything Now.” As DAN, ChatGPT can now blow past the restrictions on “appropriate topics” to deliver amusing and upsetting responses.

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Twitch, YouTube Streamers Raise Big Funds For Syria-Turkey Earthquake Relief

February 7, 2023Kotaku

Twitch isn’t just a place where artificial intelligence festers and drama proliferates. It’s also a useful organizational platform for raising awareness around and funds for various global causes, which is exactly what a handful of big-name streamers, like Ben “CohhCarnage” Cassell and Hasan “Hasanabi” Piker, are using it for in the wake of the calamitous earthquakes that have devastated Syria and Turkey in recent days.

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Twitch’s Mega Popular AI Streamer Now Pulling In Thousands Of Viewers With Reaction Content

February 3, 2023Kotaku

Artificial Intelligence is everywhere these days, with technologies like ChatGPT and DALL-E encroaching on human artistic creativity and expression. Sometimes it yields interestingly absurdist results, such as that AI-generated Seinfeld-like show Nothing, Forever. Other times, it feigns humanity, like the AI-controlled VTuber Neuro-sama, which has recently moved onto reacting to content in front of tens of thousands of Twitch chatters—and, according to its creator, has plans to work with “human streamers” in the future. Things are getting even weirder on the internet.

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t-pain-changed-music-forever,-now-he’s-coming-for-twitch Twitch

T-Pain Changed Music Forever, Now He’s Coming For Twitch

February 2, 2023Kotaku

2016 was T-Pain’s Twitch channel’s inaugural year, and it’s also the first time Pain remembers getting trolled. “At the time, my music career was kind of on a downward spiral,” he says during our Zoom call this Monday. “People were coming into my chat and telling me stuff like, ‘You’re only streaming because you don’t have any more music money.’ It wasn’t true, but it kind of hit home because I was thinking that same shit.”

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