Commenter GiantBoyDetective is going to cry, because little kids can be dicks. In today's Speak Up on Kotaku he tells the sad story of misplaced trust and children that need a good spanking.

Something happend today. Something that made me so angry I almost cried out of frustration in front of my 6th grade class. I have all sorts of video game and cartoon nicknacks on my desk and today one of them was stolen by a student. It was a Pokeball with a gold Charizard card I got from Burger King when I was ten. It may have cost like $5 back then, but it has a lot of sentimental value, as I played with it often and was always proud to show it off. Stolen. Gone. Taken.

I addressed my class choked up by anger and frustration telling them that if they knew who took it or knew of any info they should tell me ASAP. My voice cracked once or twice. It was at the end of the day and I know most of the class was stunned as they walked out the door. I wanted to throw up. Who steals from their teacher? I thought we were going to have a fun school year, but now I can't trust anyone. I feel kinda stupid getting worked up over what is essentially a Burger King toy, but I just can't help it.

I was having such a great day too. Guess I'll put me detective skills to work tomorrow to find the culprit. Sigh.

A layoff is a layoff is a layoff, to misquote Gertrude Stein. Surely, they all suck. But they also happen. Some would say they have to happen, capitalism being what it is and such and such.

So, all of you big, powerful gaming industry executives who employ people to read Kotaku for them, when you are laying off other people in the gaming industry, don't do it the OnLive way:

We don't respond to rumors and have no comment.

The exciting news is the first VIZIO Co-Stars (Google TV stream players) with the OnLive app built-in have just arrived in customer homes, and our second of three 'Indie Giveaway Weekends' is going on now. OnLive users can get a free copy of the award-winning games Space Pirates and Zombies and SpaceChem (more details on our blog here: blog.onlive.com).

Don't do it the Activision Vs. Infinity Ward way:

Fenady testified that he expressed concern about the project but was told, "Don't worry about the repercussions." Fenady found an outside company, InGuardians, who also balked at the task because of "legal hurdles." Stymied, Fenady approached the company's Facilities Department and talked about staging a "fake fumigation" and a "mock fire drill" in order to get West and Zampella away from their computers long enough to copy files on their computers. (as reported by the LA Times)

Don't do it the THQ way:

Kotaku has heard from some affected that, yes, most employees were informed of the decision today. The first day of E3. About as busy a day in the games press as you're ever going to get, meaning it's as good a chance they're going to get of burying the news under a flood of trailers and game announcements.

Don't do it the 38 Studios way:

(Image via Joystiq.)

Is that how you should do it? Nah.

Do it the PopCap way, if you've got to do it at all:

...this morning we informed our employees about a reorganization in our studios that will include a "Reduction In Force" in our North American operation – mostly in our headquarters here in Seattle – and an "exploratory consultation" to evaluate the future of our PopCap office in Dublin, Ireland.

And now in English: "Reduction In Force" means that some people are losing their jobs. "Exploratory consultation" means we're talking to our Dublin team about the future of that office and whether we can find a path to improve our profitability in Europe without having to close the operation. Today's news is something you expect periodically from a company in a fast-changing industry, but it sucks if you're one of the people losing his or her job. These people are our friends and we don't like doing this.

We've made hard decisions before, even had cuts before – at this time in North America there are about 50 people who will no longer work at PopCap. We've hired aggressively this past year and PopCap is still growing. Even with the cuts we expect to end the year with roughly the same number of people we started with.

A little context on why we're making cuts in some areas while we're investing and expanding in others: In the past year, we've seen a dramatic change in the way people play and pay for games. Free-to-play, social and mobile games have exploded in popularity. That happened fast. Surprisingly so. The change in consumer tastes requires us to reorganize our business and invest in new types of games on new platforms. It's a completely different world from when we started.

There's also an economic component to the reorganization. To stay in business, we need to manage costs, improve efficiency and maintain a profit. We've been able to invest in creative new games like Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies because we had a high profit business. That business is challenged, and if we don't adapt, we won't be able to invest in new IP. That sounds harsh – but if we don't stay in business, no more plants, zombies, jewels, frogs or worms.

One year ago, we decided to integrate PopCap with EA. I know I wouldn't choose to be anywhere else right now. EA has provided a lot of resources for us to grow and allowed us to operate as an independent studio. I've seen speculation that EA is no longer letting PopCap run independently, and that's simply not true. The founders, CEO, and executives who were in charge of PopCap still are. The decision to reorganize was 100 percent made by us, with no pressure from EA. EA has a diverse business with games on consoles, PCs and practically every other platform under the sun. We're glad to have those resources supporting us when a lot of other independent studios are struggling. In addition, some of the people affected by the reorganization may be retrained and reassigned to other jobs in the EA studios. If we didn't have EA behind us, the cuts would have been worse.

What's next? Part of making changes is to stay healthy and viable. Good companies don't wait to change until it's too late. We're growing quickly into new areas of mobile and social, and are expanding in new markets like Japan and China. And there are many more great games to come from PopCap.

While today's news is distressing in some ways, especially to those of us who've been with PopCap from the beginning, we're sincerely excited about the company's future prospects and committed to continuing to lovingly craft the very best and most broadly appealing video games in the world.

John Vechey, Co-founder

Because, hey, sometimes you've got to let people go, but you might as well try to be a human being about it.

I remember the first time I saw OnLive demoed for me. Three years ago, I was ushered into a conference room on Manhattan's Midtown East neighborhood and saw Crysis running of the cloud gaming service's network. It looked impressive, sure, but there could have been all sorts of tomfoolery going on to make the streaming look that good. But when I demoed it at my own desk some months later, I had to admit that the experience was better than expected. Damn if the thing didn't work pretty well. Damn if they didn't invent something that really didn't exist before.

Then it all went pear-shaped.

The saga of OnLive took surprising turns over the weekend as the company went from suddenly not existing anymore to a hollowed-out version announcing that it was still operating. While you can't have a funeral for OnLive since the service is continuing, it's still arguably the end of an era Some small part of me always rooted for OnLive, despite experiencing firsthand the challenges that the cloud gaming service faced. The key component of OnLive—streaming games hosted on servers elsewhere—worked but it was met by obstacles on nearly side.

When I reviewed the company's micro-console more than a year ago, I was locked out because my cable bandwidth was so terrible. This was despite the fact that it exceeded the minimum standards set by OnLive. Those hiccups got ironed out but the microconsole was still limited to a hardwired Ethernet connection. The lack of WiFi in a gaming device felt annoyingly backward. A year later, that hasn't changed.

Nevertheless, once you got onto OnLive, the catalog of games was dwarfed by what you could access in a game store or, worse, Steam. The offerings did get better with time and it was more common to see big releases like NBA 2K12, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Darksiders II launch on OnLive on their dates of release. But it still seemed like a perpetual game of catch-up.

Another problem with OnLive was the way that they tried to position themselves. No exec or PR person I ever spoke to at the old OnLive ever fooled themselves that they'd replace the Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii. They saw themselves as additive, a place where you could sample games before you bought them or rent titles without having to wait on the mail.

OnLive always seemed like an alternative and not like a main destination, which was sort of refreshingly blunt, but it also made them easy to ignore or forget. The smart-TV partnerships that OnLive struck up with Vizio, LG and other manufacturers gave OnLive another entry point into the living room, but those deals would also be vulnerable to the quality of broadband. And in each of those deals, OnLive was just another bullet point in a long list of similar features. Hard to muster a reaction stronger than, "Oh yeah, OnLive…" when it's presented like that.

There was slightly more wow associated with the company's moves on tablet platforms, though. When OnLive's controller-and-app combo launched last year, it looked like a great way to get the kinds of deep, rich AAA game experiences that were sorely lacking on bigger-screened handhelds. I tried it on iPad and really liked it.

But while an Android launch spread out amongst that operating system's various devices, an iOS offering never materialized. OnLive never commented on the delay and what might be behind it but I think it's reasonable to speculate that they ran afoul of Apple's restrictions on in-app purchases. Apple wants all in-app purchases to run through their App Store infrastructure and the ultimate stumbling point may have been a failure to get OnLive's in-client economy to fall along those strict Apple guidelines. Whatever the reason, OnLive found themselves with no way into the ecosystem of Apple's incredibly popular iDevices. Not a great place to be.

A well-received foray in cloud-based productivity called OnLive Desktop followed, using OnLive's streaming tech to host access to Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and other programs. But games were the company's main focus. And the recent announcement that OnLive would be appearing on the Ouya console seemed like another chance for them to grab the precious eyeballs they needed to stay viable.

But then the crumbling and rebirth happened.

OnLive's latest mutation isn't the end of the affair by any means. What Lauder Partners has invested in is a company that reportedly still owns the servers, patents and partnerships that the old OnLive did, with a fraction of the operating costs. That makes them even more attractive to potential buyers than they were before. Picking up OnLive would be a no-brainer for Microsoft, especially if they want to be on equal footing after Sony's purchase of rival cloud-gaming outfit Gaikai.

But a juicier fantasy would be an acquisition by Google. The search giant's server infrastructure would probably help mitigate OnLive's network problems and Google would get a distribution pipeline for Google Play content that's already optimized for gaming. The two companies already have a pact in place and OnLive might even thrive as part of the Google Fiber initiative. Valve's already working on its Big Picture offering, so it seems unlikely that they'd want to acquire OnLive to integrate it into something that's already well underway.

Someone somewhere might wind up buying OnLive in its newer, leaner form. But if the service is ever going to reach its full potential, it's going to have to be a buyer that can address the problems—building a catalog, optimizing bandwidth, establishing a real foothold in living rooms and mobile platforms—that plagued OnLive's previous incarnation. OnLive still probably points the way to video games' future, but it's going to an extremely bumpy ride for the company to get there at all.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is officially available as of today. But if you haven't touched the beta or purchased the game retail, feel free to get familiar with some of the old school maps and new(ish) school modes right here.

This video gives you a glimpse at what the first-person shooting action in CS: GO is like, game skills courtesy of our own Chris Person. It's not unlike Valve's immensely popular Source, full of tightly wound maps and Counter-Terrorist versus Terrorist objectives (plant the bomb, defuse the bomb, save the hostages, kill your opponents as much as you can).

The video features a glance at the Bank and Dust maps. We'll have more on the new Arms Race mode, modeled after the Gun Game mod for Counter-Strike: Source that rewards kills with a new weapon later.

Oh, and, for Chris's sake: keep in mind this was his first time playing GO. And it's been years since either of us played Source.

Regular Kotaku comics man Evan Narcisse had to dash off to a meeting and asked me, the guy who has pretty much only been reading all—yes, all—of Brian Michael Bendis' Avengers run for the past month, to recommend some new comics worth buying this week.

Hmm. Let's see. How about...

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Dragon Age: Those Who Speak #1
Do you like Dragon Age? Here's some new Dragon Age for you. Official summary: "In this essential story from the lead writer of BioWare's Dragon Age games, a king travels to an empire of evil mages to uncover the fate of his lost father! Accompanied by the pirate captain Isabela and the underworld merchant Varric, King Alistair will stop at nothing to learn the truth-even if it means battling an army of cultists single-handed!"

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Before Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan #1
Because, you know, you shouldn't leave a comics shop without feeling like you just bought some porn. (Alternate, more obscure joke for this item: DC tries to convince Alan Moore that they're up for Before Lost Girls, too.)

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Scalped #60
Scalped is one of the great comics of this century, a gritty story about an FBI agent who goes undercover to crack a criminal enterprise in the Native American reservation where he grew up. If you like good, dark, violent drama, Scalped is for you. This is the final issue, written as always, by the wonderful Jason Aaron and drawn by the series' main artist, R.M. Guera.

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I said, "Scalped #60"
Seriously. Scalped# 60. Get it. Not kidding. And if you haven't read the other 59, get them too!

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Amazing Spider-Man #692
50th Anniversary Issue, and just eight more to go before the much-hyped status-quo-changing #700. Official summary: "Special 50TH Anniversary Issue! Join us for a once in a lifetime event: the one, true 50th Anniversary Issue of the Amazing Spider-Man. A special over-sized issue harkening back to the legend the legend that started it all! Get ready for an all-new tale about a different kind of power and responsibility... • Plus original stories by Dean Haspiel, Joshua Hale Fialkov & Nuno Plati!"

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Not the best week, not the worst week. A decent week. And if you're wondering, the Bendis Avengers run(s) read well, but the guy has a weird thing for setting up great premises for his many characters and then letting other writers reach narrative closure with those characters in other books (See: Nick Fury, Scarlet Witch, more...).

(Images and official summaries snatched from Midtown Comics. They're good people over there. Buy your comics from them, if you haven't turned into one of these comic-book-shop-killing ComiXology digital comics consumers like me.)

The Black Panther is my favorite superhero. So, it really sucks that I hate almost everything about him right now.

It's not just that the Black Panther is a favorite of mine. He's also one of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's best creations, first showing up in a run that's considered one of the best of all time. Almost everything great about him debuted in those Fantastic Four comics, and it's the fact that those elements are currently shattered that rankles me.

When I think back, I can't remember the first place I encountered the Black Panther. It was probably in an old issue of Marvel Triple Action, a series that reprinted old Avengers stories. When I plowed through the Roy Thomas/John Buscema storylines, I didn't know that the man called T'Challa was arguably the first black superhero I just knew that I liked his costume and the way that Buscema drew the character, all sleek feline muscularity exploding across the page. The fact that he looked more like me than most other crimefighters was just icing on the cake.

As I devoured everything I could find about the character, the elements of his mythos that made him unique started to sing to me: the fact that his superhero persona was a royal title passed on through generations, the improbably advanced technological kingdom he ruled over and the combination of raw emotion and shrewd, genius-level intellect. His first appearance has him smoking a cigarette as he coolly trumps the Fantastic Four in a series of traps designed to test their mettle. From the very first, T'Challa was a different kind of bad-ass.

The best interpretations of T'Challa have sketched him out to be a person torn between personal desire and public duty. In Don McGregor's classic 1970s story arcs, he did things that other superheroes couldn't or wouldn't. He struggled with an attempted coup and tried to balance tribal traditionalism with the encroachment of the outside world. The political tensions surrounding the African monarch's romance with an Black American woman added depth to something that would otherwise just have been a rote subplot. Hell, he fought the Ku Klux Klan.

Nevertheless, he was a second-tier character for years. That changed when Christopher Priest got his hands on the character in the late 1990s. For me, Priest's run was the height of the Panther's publishing history. Here was a Wakanda portrayed as a xenophobic paradise ruled by a lonelier, more emotionally-removed T'Challa. This was a Black Panther who suffered the pains of always putting his homeland first and put forth a harder, more brittle sort of heroism as a result. Priest's run lured readers in with a cooler-than-cool protagonist and then ushered them in the high stakes world of superhero statecraft, where summits with Dr. Doom, the Sub-Mariner and other leaders of the Marvel Universe happened in the most unlikely locations. It was a glorious time to be a Black Panther fan.

But, thanks to the most recent developments in the Marvel Universe, his kingdom lies in ruins, his intellect is given only lip service and his emotional range feels numb and cold. In the Avengers vs. X-Men event, a Phoenix-powered Submariner lays waste to the country of Wakanda and T'Challa blandly informs the X-Man Storm, his wife of the last few years, that they're no longer married. These happenings are a far cry from a realm that once seemed undefeatable and a man who burned with a fiery desire to do what was right.

The current state of the Panther's mythos seems to indicate the path Marvel plans to take him on: plot beats in several recent appearances made a point to drive home the idea that T'Challa is a product of both spiritualism and super-science. One adventure left him as a ruler of the Wakandan underworld, with a link to the knowledge of all his forebears.

And the announcement that a film version of the Black Panther would be amongst the next slate of Marvel movies means that we'll probably start to see a higher profile for the character soon. There might even be a new series as part of the Marvel Now! Relaunch intitative. When I fantasize about what I want out of a relaunched Panther, I like T'Challa most as a character who blends elements of a stalwart ally and a ruthless strategist. You know he'll do the right thing but maybe in the wrong ways. Right now, he's in the worst kind of limbo. Here's hoping Marvel finds him a way out.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron tells the story of the last days of a dying planet. It's the tale of two warring factions reaching out across the cosmos for the sake of survival. To fans of the franchise, this is a historical account of a fixed point in time, the outcome of which is predetermined.

We know the ending of this story — it's been told and re-told countless times over the past three decades. This is the World War II of giant transforming robots. The outcome is not going to change.

High Moon Studios approaches Fall of Cybertron in much the same way a screenwriter or novelist goes about crafting a compelling story set in one of our world's many historically significant conflicts, placing the focus on the individuals caught up in the battle.

This is not a story of war. It is a story of warriors.

Picking up where 2010's War for Cybertron left off, Fall of Cybertron finds the remaining Autobots and Decepticons desperately clambering over each other in an attempt to flee their dying world. For the noble Autobots this is a matter of finding enough life-giving Energon to sustain a journey across the stars. The Decepticons, with resources to spare, spend their time to make sure none of their enemies makes it off the planet alive.

The game opens aboard the Autobot Ark, as the sadly mute Bumblebee (curse you, Hasbro) fends off a Deception boarding party. It's a prelude to the main story that serves as a tutorial, getting players acquainted with the third-person shooter mechanics of the game. It's also as close to the oft-criticized repetitive gameplay of War for Cybertron as Fall gets. As Bee battles his way from one pitched firefight to the next it seems as if the game is going down that same path.

This is fortunately not the case. High Moon Studios has learned from prior mistakes.

Post opening credits the story takes us several cycles prior, following a diverse cast of Autobots and Decepticon characters as they make their way towards that inevitable confrontation. Each new playable robot brings something fresh and new to the battle. Optimus Prime orders orbital bombardments and commands one of the greatest weapons of mass destruction Cybertron has ever seen. Cliffjumper infiltrates Decepticon installations using stealth and subterfuge. Jazz uses his energy tether to traverse delightfully vertical levels. Soundwave ejects the tiny robots that call his body home, commanding them to attack any Autobot foolish enough to cross his path. The massive Grimlock swings his sword to build the rage needed to transform into a rampaging mecha-dinosaur.

Where War for Cybertron's story mode felt like a series of battles tossed in my path in order to lengthen the period between opening and closing credits, I found myself eagerly anticipating each new chapter of Fall of Cybertron. High Moon has managed to marry story pacing and gameplay in such a way that no moment feels wasted. Every bullet fired, switch flipped, and target destroyed is absolutely essential to reaching the grand conclusion.

The game is filled with spectacular moments, many of which we've already seen during its promotional period. The Combaticons combining to form Bruticus. The gargantuan Metroplex heeding the call of the last Prime. And those are just the cinematics. There are playable segments, such as the Decepticon Swindle's efforts to take down a vehicle easily a hundred times larger than himself, where you just have to pause for a moment and take it all in.

As with any war story, however, the finest moments are the more human ones. The Transformers franchise is based on toys that change form, but the real appeal is the very human character these mechanical monsters have been instilled with over the years.

Fall of Cybertron does a fantastic job of portraying the humans hiding inside these more-than-meets-the-eyes machines. Optimus Prime is stoic and contemplative, unleashing his true power only when those that look to him as leader are in peril. Jazz and Cliffjumper are comrades in arms, trading barbs that might as well be clanky mechanical hugs. Starscream is a power-hungry backstabber on the brink of madness.

Perhaps Grimlock serves as the best example of humanity in robot form. Twisted and tortured at the hands of a mad scientist, his intelligence sacrificed for strength, his first concern upon breaking free of captivity is the safety of his brothers-in-giant-robot-arms.

The story and spectacle all come together in the game's finale, the most satisfying series of events I've experienced in a Transformers video game.

The unique online multiplayer experience of War for Cybertron returns in Fall of Cybertron, streamlined and refined to the point that fans of the first game might be a little disappointed with some of the major changes. Most notable among these changes is the lack of special abilities in vehicle form, one of the core features that made the original experience so novel and exciting. With special skills limited to robot form and vehicle weapons that don't feel nearly as potent as their hand-mounted counterparts, vehicle forms are useful for travel but not much else.

Once I overcame my initial disappointment, however, I found myself having a great deal of fun charging into battle against human opponents, shouting "Being shot in the face is the right of all sentient beings" as I unloaded by robot shotgun. The competitive game modes shine the spotlight on the fast-paced shooting the single player experience shies away from, with a handful of entertaining game modes to choose from. Unfortunately multiplayer lobbies are dedicated to a single mode each, so if you want the group you are playing with in Team Deathmatch to follow you into a round of Capture the Flag you've got to disband the lobby and send invites to everyone involved.

Also returning from War for Cybertron is Escalation, the four-player cooperative horde mode in which players earn points and then spend them on unlocking new areas and upgrades in an ever-evolving arena. This time around players take on specific roles — healer, ammo supplier, tank — meaning working together is more essential than ever. Making it through all 15 increasingly challenging levels is a true bonding experience.

The pieces of plastic that filled my toy box as a child were more than just toys. Each colorful figure liberated from that battered wooden prison had a story to tell. I gave them dreams. I gave them voices. Though Hasbro laid the groundwork, I gave them personalities as diverse as their functions. There was a war going on, sure, but I was more concerned with the characters than any overarching purpose, even one as grand as survival of the species.

After playing Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, I get the feeling that the High Moon folks feel the same way about their toys.

There's no question that Defense Of The Ancients (Dota) is big. It's a big deal. It's also an immensely complicated game that has evolved over years of intense play, modding, and sprawling evolution. It's not very much like any other game out there. And for that reason, it could be argued that Dota 2 lays bare just how unimaginative most video games these days are.

Resident expert in these proceedings: Quintin Smith of Rock, Paper Shotgun, a journalist, board-game enthusiast, and deft wordsmith who has recently spent a hefty chunk of his life deeply submerged in the world of Dota 2. He's been playing the beta before Valve releases the game in its final, free-to-play incarnation on Steam. His verdict? "It's no joke to say it'll become the biggest thing on the PC."

In fact, Smith thinks that Dota 2 is so fresh, so bracingly different in its design that it could never be the product of a major game studio. The game started as a mod and grew in hundreds of unexpected, uncontrollable ways, similar to his current examples of Minecraft and DayZ. But unlike those games, he says that Dota 2 is unlike anything that could be purposefully cooked up by a game development studio. Developers simply don't think the same way that a huge group of gamer/modders do—and as a result, they'll never make a game like Dota 2.

But unlike Minecraft and Day Z, Dota's design could never have surfaced from a commercial games development studio. Mostly, game development studios adhere to genre conventions, and we consider ourselves lucky when they work with no care for genre at all. But what they categorically do not do is go against people's instincts. Nobody's going to make a multiplayer game with one map, that takes an hour to play, that looks like an RTS but will fuck you if you try and play it like one.

Which is to say, it looks like Dota 2′s about to become the most popular game on PC. And it couldn't have come from a professional games studio. That speaks of a strange inadequacy within commercial game design. But that's not actually the depressing part.

He then goes one further, pointing out that despite the fact that a number of different studios are working on "Moba-Like" games, it's possible that none of them will outdo the original. That, Smith says, is perhaps the most dispiriting thing of all:

As you read these words, a dozen professional studios around the world are racing to emulate Dota's success. What's going to be truly depressing is if of all the contenders in the brand-new moba genre, Valve's curator-like porting of Dota 2 into the Source engine remains the most popular one. Not only could our games industry not have had this idea, they can't even improve on it.

All of this is to say that yes, mainstream game development is responsible for many wonderful things. But it may never channel the sheer complexity and scope of a community-driven, mod-based game like Dota 2. And hey, that's probably alright.

Dota 2: An Electric Valhalla, Pt. 1 [RPS]

Nintendo is holding a major Wii U press event in New York City on September 13, hosted by Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime. An invitation sent to select media outlets today promised a day that will let us learn "more about how the Wii U will change the future of gaming and entertainment."

Sure, that's what they say, but let's read between the lines, shall we?

The last time Nintendo did a Reggie-hosted event in New York City, it was an all-day event that had him taking the stage to reveal the launch date and price of the 3DS. Launch-window games were there for reporters to play, but which games were coming out on launch date were still to be announced. The event was held in January, 2011 and the system came out in America in March 2011.

The time before that that Nintendo did one of these Reggie-NYC things? It was a big Wii launch showcase. It was the first place I played Wii Sports bowling and essentially the crossing-the-T's-dotting-the-I's event for that system's U.S. launch.

So, barring some strange change in behavior, Nintendo is likely to tell the world on September 13 when the Wii U will come out in America, how much it will cost and maybe even which games we'll play on launch day. They're not saying that, but that's what history tell us.

Ars Technica has an article up saying that the long-running Nintendo Power magazine is ceasing publication.

Multiple sources at Nintendo Power publisher Future have told Kotaku that Nintendo Power is ending and that the broad factual strokes of the Ars Technica report ring true with what's been circulating within the company. Nintendo Power was one of the oldest video game magazines in the United States, having started in 1988 under the auspices of Nintendo. Future took over production of the magazine—which last claimed a readership of 475,000—in 2007.

We've reached out to Future and Nintendo for comment and will update this story as needed.