A Compelling Destiny 2 Conspiracy Theory, Black Ops 6's Terrific Zombies Mode, And More Topics We Had Strong Feelings On This Week

Photo: Roblox Corp / Kotaku, Image: Black Tabby Games, Bungie, CSA Images / Sony / Kotaku, Treyarch / Activision

This week saw the arrival of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and with it, the return of a classic Zombies experience. It’s terrific, and took our writer right back to the nights he spent happily playing the mode with friends back in the days of Black Ops 3. Meanwhile, the arrival of Destiny 2's latest content update, and the terrible drop rate for god rolls on its hottest weapon, has some fans certain that there’s a statistical disadvantage for that drop to occur. The result is a compelling conspiracy theory about how loot drops actually work in Destiny 2, and given that the community has the statistics to back it up, Bungie is now conducting its own investigation. Find these stories and more in the pages ahead.

Photo: Roblox Corp / Kotaku

Today’s news that Roblox is adding new child safety measures to the phenomenally popular game platform is certainly good to hear, but the nature of these scant changes reveals just how careless and callous the app has been for so many years, and how it continues to offer almost no protections for children. - John Walker Read More

Image: Black Tabby Games

When I play a smaller game that really has an effect on me, I’m usually cool with not getting more of it. The advantage of artful, smaller-scope projects is that they can concisely say what they need to say without being beholden to all the forever-game nonsense that infects the AAA space. However, I’ll make an exception for Black Tabby Games’ horror visual novel Slay the Princess, one of the best games from 2023. The Pristine Cut expansion incorporates its new material smoothly with that of the original release, giving you more of what makes it so great and serving as a welcome reminder that this is an incredible game. - Kenneth Shepard Read More

Image: Bungie

Destiny 2 players are convinced the game is secretly ripping them off. While on its face an epic space opera about humanity confronting cosmic evil in a post-apocalyptic future, Bungie’s sci-fi shooter is also a Pokémon-style collectathon where instead of cute magical creatures, players capture rare, ornate, and powerful guns. The game’s latest “weightgate” controversy is a strangely compelling conspiracy theory proposing that certain ideal weapon variants are dropping at much lower rates than junk ones, and it’s reigniting old debates about Destiny 2's loot system and whether it’s actually fun or not. - Ethan Gach Read More

Image: CSA Images / Sony / Kotaku

Gaming seems destined for an all-digital future, but even as players overwhelmingly buy games digitally, they still appear to be opting for consoles with disc drives over ones without them. According to recent data on the current state of the console race, digital-only PlayStation 5s appear to be the least popular hardware this generation. - Ethan Gach Read More

Image: Treyarch / Activision

Earlier this week, I felt a feeling I hadn’t felt in a long while: I was looking forward to the release of a Call of Duty game. Black Ops 6, the latest installment in the long-running Call of Duty sub-series, has spent the last several months hyping up audiences about all of its changes and innovations, like its quickened pace and omnimovement. Meanwhile, the promotional tour has also been deliberately trying to harken back to some kind of golden age for the franchise, which seems as embattled as ever despite still regularly posting huge numbers and breaking records year after year. In recent weeks, players have been excited over the return of systems like prestige, which I didn’t even realize had been stripped from the games, but my personal favorite bit of messaging has been around Zombies, a fan-favorite cooperative mode that has become a staple of CoD since it was first introduced in 2008. - Moises Taveras Read More