Covid-19 News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Razer, makers of various pretty good gaming peripherals and one deeply questionable face mask, have been slapped with a $1.1 million fine by US regulators after said mask was determined to have misled buyers over the amount of protection it afforded. Kotaku reports that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took issue with Razer’s claim that the Zephyr, an RGB monstrosity released during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, could act as a medical-grade N95 respirator – it could not – and will allocate $1 million of that fine towards refunds for fooled, if colourfully illuminated, buyers.

GameStop may begin purchasing graded Pokémon cards at a select number of retail locations soon, according to store associates. If true, the move would make the retailer one of the single largest buyers of graded collectibles with nearly 3,000 potential retail locations in the United States for consumers to sell their cards. Rumors first began circulating Thursday, via PokéBeach. Polygon has reached out to GameStop’s press team for comment.

Blizzard has announced it will not hold its annual BlizzCon event in 2024, but promised the event will return in future years.

SSD & HDD prices are expected to skyrocket, with two big manufacturers, Western Digital, and Seagate, anticipating increased demand.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, I faced a dilemma that might be familiar to many computer users: My wrists were killing me. I was pulling eight-hour shifts at work, then playing more games on PC than ever on the same setup to stay connected to friends during a bleak time. I hadn’t experienced wrist pain from typing before, but it was so bad that I couldn’t go on without finding a more comfortable alternative that had at least some of the bells and whistles I expected from a modern gaming keyboard.

Film company Altitude Media Group has picked up a documentary that takes place entirely inside the world of Grand Theft Auto 5, and it’s called Grand Theft Hamlet, per Deadline.

The Last of Us Part II Remastered arrived last week, and if the cutscene commentary from the game's director, writer and key actors wasn't enough for you, Naughty Dog has another behind the scenes piece coming. Grounded II: Making The Last Of Us Part II, a documentary on the game's creation, will arrive on February 2 at 12PM ET on YouTube as well as in the game itself. There's a trailer in the remastered game currently, and the full documentary will be added via a downloadable patch. That patch will also have some new skins for Ellie and Abby in the main game.

Naughty Dog's documentary on The Last of Us 2 is releasing on February 2, complete with new cosmetics for the sequel's recently released PS5 remaster.

Productivity tools have been on the rise over the last few years, especially after the COVID-19 lockdowns forced everyone to work from home. In today's hustle culture, these tools can help you organize, not only your work but your life too, allowing you to stay ahead of all commitments. And to succeed, staying organized and collaborating with your team is essential to ensure high productivity and output. If you want your team to be productive and perform well, it is very important that everyone is well aware of the productivity tools available these days. One productivity tool that has risen through the ranks is Notion, a versatile productivity app that offers a one-stop solution for note-taking, document creation, task management, and more. And now, it has just got better with the integration of one crucial and highly sought-after feature - Notion Calendar. Know all about it.

Searching for information has become instant and effortless — just go to your nearest device, ask Siri or click a few keys. But are we better informed than we were before Google became a verb?  A new paper published in Nature hints that we're not. When researchers exposed volunteers to a mix of fake and real news stories, they found people became more prone to being fooled by fake stories after being asked to do an internet search. 

Developer Naughty Dog has announced a new documentary detailing the development of The Last of Us Part 2. The documentary, titled Grounded 2: Making The Last of Us Part 2, will act as a sequel to the original Grounded, which was released back in 2015.

Actor Troy Baker knew from the beginning that The Last of Us 2 was bound to be a highly controversial game.

When Dimension 20’s hit Dungeons & Dragons actual-play series, Fantasy High, first premiered in 2018, the medium itself was just starting to come into focus. A decade after Penny Arcade got things started with Acquisitions Incorporated, the format had three distinct expressions: livestreaming weekly content in the style of Critical Role, a regular drop of podcast episodes à la The Adventure Zone, or prerecorded, short-form, gimmick-forward productions like HarmonQuest. Others had tried to get traction with fickle audiences, but long-form, prerecorded tabletop role-play — akin to the more familiar mediums of TV and film — failed to make a lasting impact.

CES 2024: The annual tech industry fair known as the tech is regaining momentum after the pandemic, with artificial intelligence (AI) infusing everything from bicycles to baby bottles. The gadget extravaganza referred to as CES formally kicks off Tuesday in Las Vegas, boasting more than 3,500 exhibitors and expecting some 130,000 visitors. CES exhibitor and attendee numbers have jumped each year since the Covid-19 pandemic caused it to be an online-only event in 2021.

AI Roundup: NITI Aayog VC advocates AI solutions for marine fisheries challenges; Government and industry collaborate on AI for public grievance resolution; AI model predicts COVID-19 fresh variant waves with 80% accuracy; Railways to utilise AI for crowd control during Prayagraj's Magh Mela- this and more in our daily roundup. Let us take a look.

Square Enix has suspended its housing demolition process in Final Fantasy 14, following an earthquake in the Noto Peninsula of Japan on New Year's Day. The 7.6 magnitude earthquake has left thousands without power or shelter.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, the whole world went online and this created a new trend of working from home, which to a lesser degree, still applies across many organisations globally. While it brought many benefits to employees, they also struggled with productivity and managing a healthy work-life balance. Now, artificial intelligence (AI) has come as a boon to the corporate world in reducing manual tasks and helping employees to focus on tasks that really matter. Over the years, various AI productivity tools were introduced, and we have found one such tool that could be really useful and effective in carrying out your tasks effectively. Otter.ai is an AI productivity app that can help with transcription. In fact, it can even be integrated with online meeting tools to help you transcribe words into texts and create notes. Learn more about the AI productivity app here.

Niantic, the development team behind Pokemon Go, has had a difficult 2023 following the announcement they would be capping the number of Remote Raids players could do per day. A new test seems to be aiming to fix Raid access, but players want the removal of the nerf, not a break from it.

The year 2020 was an interesting one for our planet, and an incredibly boring one for me personally. By day I was working remotely from my apartment, managing one of the pop-up shelters created by the U.K. government for its unhoused population. By night I was locked away in my bedroom-come-office staring at the same few glowing screens and in desperate need of anything that might take my eyes off the news cycle. That’s when I discovered solo board gaming.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 publisher Activision Blizzard plan to end hybrid remote/in-office work for QA staff based in Minneapolis, Austin, and El Segundo next year, with employees who are unwilling to fully return to the office offered severance, in what the ABK Workers Alliance are calling the basis for a round of "soft layoffs".

Today, the ABK Workers Alliance published a statement opposing a recent return-to-office mandate that is impacting hundreds of Activision quality assurance (QA) workers. While the company has been allowing hybrid work situations up to this point, the group says that on November 30, QA workers in Minneapolis, Austin, and El Segundo working primarily on Call of Duty were told they must fully return to office five days per week beginning in late January. Activision is offering severance to those who depart from the company as a result of this mandate.

Almost three decades after first debuting at the Los Angeles Convention Centre, the Entertainment Software Association has announced it's finally laying gaming convention E3 to rest.

"After more than two decades of E3, each one bigger than the last, the time has come to say goodbye. Thanks for the memories." So says the official E3 website this afternoon, as the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) confirm that E3 is officially dead.

US video games trade association The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) is officially abandoning the long-running E3 event.

The popular gaming expo known as E3 has been officially retired after occurring almost annually for nearly 30 years. E3, an abbreviation for Electronic Entertainment Expo, has been happening since 1995, offering a space for developers and publishers to showcase their upcoming games and hardware to members of the industry, from shareholders to journalists, for instance.

Ding, dong, E3 is dead. The Electronic Entertainment Expo has officially been brought to a close by the Entertainment Software Association that organised the show, it has been confirmed.

The Entertainment Software Association has announced that its long-running Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is officially dead, as reported by The Washington Post. The last in-person E3 conference happened in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic and other complications prevented it from coming back in full form since. Despite struggles, the ESA attempted to bring E3 back in various ways. 

£167 million worth of video game consoles, accessories and physical games were sold over the Black Friday week in the UK, GfK reveals.

It is no secret that Apple is working towards reducing its dependence on China for the production of its various devices, including iPhones. In recent years, Apple has shifted its focus towards India and wants to expand its partnership by planning to produce the iPhone 16 battery in India. Suppliers in India have been told to upscale their production for the same. China is Apple's massive production and supply chain country, but India is taking away a lot of their business away. The shift is happening due to the many risk factors that were exposed by the COVID-19 years. Know what Apple is planning for its new generation of iPhone.

This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.

Kids in the United States really want video game gifts for Christmas, according to survey results published on Nov. 20 by the Electronic Software Association. Video game-related gifts top wish lists — just eking out asks for money, clothes, and non-games electronics. But of the kids surveyed, 39% of kids plan to ask for game subscriptions, followed by consoles (38%), gear and accessories (32%), in-game currency (29%), and physical video games (22%).

The devs at Creative Assembly have had a rough time of it recently. Back in September, the studio was blindsided by the sudden cancellation of its upcoming live-service shooter Hyenas, barely two weeks after it had concluded an open beta and one month after an appearance at Gamescom. The result was layoffs, uncertainty, and now the studio is going to attempt to pivot back to what it knows best: real-time strategy.

ReedPop is 'investigating the potential sale' of its Gamer Network business.

The CEO of PC games giant Valve, Gabe Newell, is set to appear in court in the near future.

Valve's founder Gabe Newell was recentlyordered to ensure his in-court presence to testify in person for the ongoing lawsuit between Wolfire Games and Valve.

Valve's CEO, Gabe Newell, finds himself compelled to appear in person for a deposition in the antitrust lawsuit filed by Wolfire Games, developers of Overgrowth. Despite Newell's initial plea for a remote deposition due to COVID-19 concerns, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington deemed his evidence insufficient to establish a particularized risk of serious illness.

Valve boss Gabe Newell is headed to court. A court order filed on November 16 (via Gamesindustry.biz) says Newell is required to testify in person in the ongoing antitrust lawsuit between Wolfire Games and Valve so the plaintiffs in the case can «adequately assess» his credibility.

Gabe Newell has been ordered to attend an in-person deposition relating to Overgrowth developer Wolfire Games' antitrust lawsuit against Valve despite his request to do it remotely.

In June 2020, I found my life steadily unraveling. While quarantining during the COVID-19 pandemic, I felt besieged by cages: my house, where my entire family lived in suffocatingly close proximity; my room, which, thanks to Zoom, had become an ad hoc auditorium for various professors; and my body, whose masculinity felt increasingly alien. I had successfully avoided interrogating my gender for months, but that changed when I watched Steven Universe.

505 Games parent company Digital Bros is cutting its global workforce by 30 per cent.

Even though its release was delayed by over a year on account of the COVID-19 pandemic, Denis Villeneuve’s Dunewas both a critical and a commercial success. So too, it seems, was Dire Wolf Digital’s ambitious board game Dune: Imperium. When Polygon reviewed it in early 2020, we called out its easy-to-learn deck-building mechanics and its lightning-fast pace. Since that time, the game has gone on to achieve an excellent reputation among fans of strategy board games, and it’s been supplemented by multiple excellent expansions. So what’s up with this sequel, Dune: Imperium — Uprising?

Do you remember Omegle? It launched in 2009 as a chat service with a twist: Instead of picking a server to join or people to talk to, users were randomly paired up for one-on-one chats with anonymous strangers from around the world. That sure sounds like a terrible idea, doesn't it? And sure enough, racism and discrimination, pornography, and child abuse were all persistent problems the site faced. Yet it continued to operate for more than 14 years, until earlier this week when site founder Leif K-Brooks announced that he's pulled the plug.

The day Overwatch League fans have braced for has finally come. Yesterday, OverActive Media, parent company for the Toronto Defiant, confirmed its exit from the Overwatch League. The company announced that as a part of its agreement with Activision Blizzard, it would receive a $6 million termination fee, thereby ending all its commitments to the League. This confirms that a majority of teams have met and voted to terminate their agreements with the League, with each team owner receiving a termination fee. The result is that the Overwatch League is finally ending after six seasons.

Take-Two's CEO believes some companies "overbuilt" during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is why we're seeing many layoffs this year.

Goth fashion isn’t new, but fashion associated with the vampire scene has seen a resurgence as the vampire has once again grown in popularity through the success of the 2022 adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, as well as the Castlevania franchise seeing a resurgence with its Netflix series. Once again, the vampire has permeated the mainstream, sinking its fangs into an entirely new generation, coupled with an interest in historical fashion and what this timeless creature has come to represent. In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, sometime in 2021, while cleaning out my wardrobe, I decided to dress like I could fit into one of Koji Igarashi’s Castlevania games.

Earlier this year, Activision Blizzard expressed doubt about the long-term future of the Overwatch League, and said its efforts to maintain the city-based pro esports league "may prove unsuccessful." That has turned out to be the case, as Activision confirmed today that the Overwatch League as we know it is finished.

After months of uncertainty, Blizzard is officially ending the Overwatch League as it transitions into "evolving competitive Overwatch in a new direction."

During and after the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has entered the digital era wherein companies have shifted to permanent remote work or hybrid work. Therefore, most of the work has been done virtually including attending meetings, studying, etc. To meet our requirements, having high-quality Active Noise Cancellation earbuds has been a priority for many. Therefore, if you are looking for a budget-friendly earbud with great noise-cancellation power, then check out the list below of the top ANC earbuds under 5000.

In recent years, Apple has been making more and more efforts to strengthen its foothold in the Indian smartphone market. It has also tapped into the ‘Make in India' initiative by establishing manufacturing of not only older iPhones but newer models such as iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 in the country. And now, the Cupertino-based tech giant is reportedly taking another giant step towards increasing its production capacity in India by kicking the new product introduction (NPI) of the iPhone 17 in the second half of 2025. Let us take a closer look.

In today's technological world, owning gadgets such as laptops, smartphones, computers, and others has become necessary. After the COVID-19 pandemic, much of the whole world has shifted to a hybrid environment, be it handling businesses, schools, colleges, etc. Therefore, laptops are one of the devices that are crucial in keeping up with today's technological demands.

White picket fences are out; 12-foot-tall skeletons from Home Depot are in.

 New York Times Co. technology workers plan to mount a half-day strike Monday afternoon, accusing the media company of trying to unilaterally force them back to the office without negotiating in good faith.

Memory provider Western Digital is spinning off its flash business into a new company that’ll adopt its own name. 

After several years as an online-only experience, or canceled outright, due to COVID-19 and controversies at the studio, BlizzCon is back to full force this year. BlizzCon 2023 kicks off on November 3 both in-person and online and Blizzard has released their schedule of panels. You can check out the schedule, below.

Eric Lempel, the SVP & Head of Global Marketing at Sony Interactive Entertainment, has been discussing all things PlayStation 5 in a new interview.

The Yakuza series, now renamed Like a Dragon, is known for minigames that are fun enough to yank attention away from the gangster melodrama for hours and hours. Nintendo's Animal Crossing: New Horizons has sold more than 40 million copies since 2020 and was fun enough to yank attention away from everything else during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. You can probably see where this is going.

Liked Starfield? Hated Starfield? You probably have Todd Howard to thank. A recent chat between MinnMax and Skyrim lead designer Bruce Nesmith shed some light on Bethesda's structure and organisation, and it sure sounds like pretty much every choice the company makes needs Howard's stamp of approval before it can go ahead, even as it's grown bigger over the years. To be fair to Howard, though, it seems like that's in spite of his own wishes.

Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2 launched on PS5 this week, starting a new chapter in one of PlayStation’s flagship series. The importance of the game for the console cannot be understated, as it is one of the biggest current-gen PlayStation exclusives to date. A recent Bloomberg report suggests that Peter and Miles’ latest adventure could be the key to the kind of PS5 sales growth Sony is looking for.

HBO TV series The Last of Us, inspired by the Naughty Dog series of the same name, has done...something to a lot of the game industry executives I've spoken with in 2023. Interest in adapting video game properties has been growing for a few years, with niche titles like Disco Elysium being scooped up and imminent projects like a Fallout TV show about to land, but the Pedro Pascal/Bella Ramsey-helmed series seems to be sparking a shift at the executive level.

The CEO and co-founder of Roblox Corporation, David Baszucki, has announced to employees that many remote staff members will soon be required to work in the company’s office three days a week, and they’ll be paid severance if they can’t relocate.

The COVID-19 pandemic drastically shifted how employees work in several industries, including gaming. As the world recovers, different studios have been trying different strategies to adapt to changed employee expectations. This becomes obvious when you compare Insomniac and Roblox Corporation.

LinkedIn today announced layoffs that affect 668 employees.

Roblox is off to a great start on PlayStation. This analysis comes from Mat Piscatella, executive director and leading analyst at Circana (NPD). In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Piscatella said Roblox "ranked 3rd in percentage of PlayStation players that played the title at least once" during its launch on the PlayStation, trailing only Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Fortnite.

It’s hard to know if there’s any information left for Intel to reveal in regard to its 14th gen CPU lineup as retail pricing is now out in the wild. The good news is that the Raptor Lake refresh isn’t going to increase the pricing from last year and will follow the example set by the 13th gen lineup.

The shift to a hybrid work environment has led to the emergence of online communication platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and more. While most of these existed before the sudden demand for them during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is now healthy competition to become the number one workspace provider in the market. Consequently, developers keep rolling out new features to keep users from switching to alternate platforms. Earlier this year, Google Meet brought 1080p video calling to one-on-one video chats, and now this feature is being introduced in group calling as well.

The Creator, the latest film from Rogue One director Gareth Edwards, takes a strong stance against war and America’s worldwide interventionism in particular, pointing out its human cost. The movie is filled with anti-war imagery and messaging, but according to Edwards, it also gained a surprising connection to a real-life war in the middle of filming.

The amount of money being invested in the video games industry by venture capital funds hit a three-year low in the three months ending September.

Venture capital funding in video games fell to its lowest in three years last quarter.

Comparing fast cars and juiced-up laptops? Yes, it's a tech-reviewer trope that PCMag and plenty of others have rolled with since unfolding the first notebook PCs. But what about when those two worlds actually do collide? That's much rarer.

By Ash Parrish, a reporter who has covered the business, culture, and communities of video games for seven years. Previously, she worked at Kotaku.

I’d like to tell you exactly what No One Will Save You is about, but there isn’t a right answer. Director Brian Duffield’s alien abduction horror-thriller has no dialogue and multiple endings that contradict each other. The movie isn’t merely “open to interpretation”; it’s a litmus test made of blobs of body horror.

Apple launched its iPhone 15 series at the Wonderlust event on September 12, and the devices went on sale on September 22. However, even before Apple started shipping these devices, the iPhone 15 series sold out for weeks, leaving prospective customers empty-handed. While this shortage is not limited to any one variant, the iPhone 15 Pro Max, which is the top-of-the-line device, is seeing the most demand, with the device being sold out until November in some places. Although initial reports attributed this to Apple struggling to make components required for its top-end iPhone, a new report has surfaced that has shed light on another reason behind this shortfall - scalpers.

Sony Interactive President Jim Ryan—the man who's led Sony's PlayStation division since 2019, is stepping down from his role as president and retiring from the company.

Hyenas was the next release from the British studio Creative Assembly. Unfortunately, it’s recently been confirmed by publisher Sega that the project – along with some others – has ceased development.

This year's Tokyo Game Show saw 243,238 participants visit the event, show organiser CESA has confirmed, which is double the attendance of last year.

Cyberpunk 2077's 2.0 update includes a Ukrainian localisation of the game's enormous script, but added in this version without developer CD Projekt Red's knowledge are references to Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

We're thrilled to announce the return of GamesBeat Next, hosted in San Francisco this October, where we will explore the theme of «Playing the Edge.» Apply to speak here and learn more about sponsorship opportunities here. At the event, we will also announce 25 top game startups as the 2024 Game Changers. Apply or nominate today!