Pandemic News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Blizzard has announced there will be class tuning for Hunter, Shaman, and Warlock on the regional maintenance for the week of April 30.

We review Express Route, a cooperative pick up and deliver board game published by The Op. Express Route is a Pandemic style game that will have players trying to deliver packages across the US.

Japan’s most popular indie games expo, BitSummit, has opened ticket sales for its 2024 event, which will return to Kyoto on Friday, July 19.

BlizzCon, Blizzard's annual get-together for fans of their games, was halted by the pandemic in 2020 and only returned as a physical event last year. One year later, it is cancelled again, Blizzard have announced.

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

Square Enix is a famously hard master to please, and eagle-eyed fans interested in industry analytics will have noted that despite launching over a month ago on 29th February, exclusively on PS5, hard sales figures for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth are yet to be released. Considering it took just three days for the firm to trumpet Remake's success during a similar period and six days for Final Fantasy XVI, it should be no huge surprise that the sequel is underperforming in some sense.

2021 was a strange year for games. Amid the pandemic, major titles were few and far between, and instead, indie games reigned supreme. No game saw more fervor and applause than It Takes Two from Hazelight Studios, an exclusively co-op action-adventure game that has managed to sell 16 million copies as of March 2024.

There's a huge price drop on one of the most popular board game classics. Walmart is offering the Pandemic board game on clearance for only $11.67, a hefty 75% off the original $45 MSRP. Get free shipping for Walmart+ members or on orders $35 or more (otherwise you have to pay $6.99 shipping). This is easily the best price we've ever seen for Pandemic, especially if you can avoid that shipping fee.

Season of Discovery hotfixes have been released for April 11, including Darkmoon Card balancing, Class tweaks, and Dreamscythe & Weaver no longer evading if a player falls in the Pit of Sacrifice!

There's a huge price drop on one of the most popular board game classics. Walmart is offering the Pandemic board game on clearance for only $14.12, a hefty 70% off the original $45 MSRP. Get free shipping for Walmart+ members or on orders $35 or more (otherwise you have to pay a $6.99 shipping fee). The price of this game dropped to about $16 last week, but this deal is even better.

Season of Discovery April 9th hotfixes adjust profession items that were formerly unobtainable — Sigil of Living Dreams and Screaming Chain Pauldrons — as well as making some Nightmare Incursion quests faster to complete!

After the pandemic, our working culture and environment have changed drastically. We have shifted to a more modern or digital world where we are working in a remote or hybrid setup. Therefore, our ways of working and communicating have also changed. We have been introduced to online meeting tools through this change, but this also has its challenges, and keeping notes about each meeting is difficult with several tasks piling up at the same time. Therefore, to improve meeting productivity, Otter AI, an AI meeting assistant allows users to take meeting notes in seconds. Know more about the app and how it works. 

The number of arcades in Japan, the world’s third-biggest games market, have declined by nearly 8,000 over the past decade, according to a new report.

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

Market research and data tracking firm NewZoo has released their 2023 PC and Console Gaming Report, and it provides an interesting snapshot of an industry in a bit of a transitional mode. The gaming industry saw out-of-control growth during the pandemic, which fizzled a bit in 2022, but 2023 saw a return to modest growth with the PC/console market reaching $93.5 billion, up 2.3 percent year-on-year. This growth was largely driven by the PC market, which was up 3.9 percent year-on-year, while the console market was up 1.7 percent YoY. The PC market accounted for 43 percent of industry revenue, while consoles were 57 percent.

Dataminers have found a new Nintendo patent, that solves a common issue for Nintendo Switch owners.

It feels strange coming back to Star Wars Battlefront after all these years. After EA’s closure of Pandemic Studios, after the disappointment of the Star Wars sequel film trilogy, and after the rollercoaster that was EA’s Battlefront reboots, having the chance to step back to the early 2000s of Star Wars shooters had an immediate appeal to it.

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

Walmart is currently offering the classic Pandemic board game on clearance for only $16.63, a hefty 63% off the original $45 MSRP. Get free shipping for Walmart+ members or on orders $35 or more (otherwise you have to pay a $6.99 shipping fee). This is the lowest price we've seen for a long, long time.

Comedy streaming service Dropout is back at it with a new series that’s set to capitalize on the PowerPoint party trend that flourished during the pandemic and on TikTok.

While 2019 feels like a lifetime ago to me now, thanks to a time-warping pandemic, I still vividly remember playing Void Bastards for the first time. I had learned about the unique shooter a few months after it launched and was instantly drawn in by its graphic novel art style and eye-catching name. I’d buy it on a hot holiday weekend in July. It was the perfect time to go outside and get some air, but I couldn’t unglue myself from my computer. I chewed it up in a few sittings, obsessing over its sci-fi setting, roguelite systems, and slick shooting.

A lot of video games, media and works of art took on a whole new meaning in the 2020s, despite not directly addressing the global pandemic that blighted the start of the decade. Themes of isolation and societal collapse are common in fiction, but revisiting games about stories like that is a bit more harrowing after living through something felt so similar. Very few games directly tackle the idea of life after COVID lockdown, and the fact that Mediterranea Inferno does just that is only one of several reasons why it’s the most unorthodox, unique, and unforgettable visual novels I’ve ever played.

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.

It’s shocking to think that within a day or so we’ll be playing Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth. But I’ve checked the calendar a good few times, and it’s definitely true.

It hasn’t always been easy to get Pokémon card packs over the past several years. During the pandemic, Pokémon cards saw a massive surge in popularity, so big that the Pokémon Company had to take drastic measures, producing more than 9 billion cards over the course of a single year as a way to address the shortage. It’s unclear what caused the boom, but it’s likely a mix of people picking up new (or old) pandemic hobbies and the increase of content creators buying cards and opening packs on streams. Basically, Pokémon cards became a nostalgia-fueled way to gamble.

We have seen far too many reports lately of the video game industry getting hit with layoffs. Seeing another studio come out with layoffs is always disheartening, but that’s the case again today. We’re finding out that Supermassive Games will be the next major studio that will be cutting back some of its staffing. 

Today, Lionsgate has released the official trailer for the Borderlands movie. Originally announced four years ago when the COVID pandemic was about to explode, the film adaptation of Gearbox's first-person shooter franchise has had its fair of troubles getting to theaters.

We don’t know about you, but it feels like the PS5 has barely broken a sweat yet. Despite being over three years old, the system’s lifespan has been hugely impacted by the pandemic, which has seen its first-party software cadence slow to a crawl and its early years massively affected by hardware shortages. It’s a little odd to hear Sony talk about the system entering the “latter half” of its lifecycle, then.

The video game industry has never been known for its job security. Game development works in cycles, and when games are released and projects end, people are often laid off. When the next project starts, hiring begins once again only for another potential cut down the line. It was hard for video game developers to feel comfortable in their positions before the most recent period of unprecedented instability. But over the past few years, it’s become a downright crisis.

As part of Sony’s third-quarter earnings report, and as reported by Bloomberg, Sony has described the PlayStation 5 as entering the “latter half” of its life cycle. 

In August of last year, Ascendant Studios developer Aaron (name changed for anonymity) was ready to take a well-deserved victory lap. He had crunched hard with many of his colleagues in the final sprint to complete Ascendant’s debut game, Immortals of Aveum, but the team had finally done it. He attended a launch party in the Bay Area where he celebrated with his colleagues, some of whom he said had to pay partially out of pocket to make the trip. But while the event was supposed to be jubilant, there was an uneasy atmosphere: it seemed like Immortals of Aveum wasn’t performing especially well. At the party, developers kept asking leadership how the game was doing, only to be met with non-committal answers.

The evidence is mounting. Switch 2 is coming this year, and could be announced as soon as next month.

Hideo Kojima has a lot of stuff on his plate, including Death Stranding 2 and the Xbox cloud-powered horror game OD, but perhaps the most exciting project for longtime fans is Physint, a new “action espionage” game in the vein of Metal Gear Solid. Since parting ways with Konami, Kojima has seemingly avoided a return to the stealth genre, so what convinced him to return?

As we continue covering Rune Discoveries for Phase 2, it's been confirmed that the new Rune Slots for players are Waist and Feet slots. During our datamining of Phase 2, we uncovered data for Runes in the Head and Wrist Slots, which aren't actually obtainable this Phase of Season of Discovery. Here is a full list of all the datamined Runes that are not available --

There’s an interesting detail in a previous rumor about Nintendo’s next console that we need to reexamine a week later.

Once every year, a select group of nuclear, climate and technology experts assemble to determine where to place the hands of the Doomsday Clock. Presented by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Doomsday Clock is a visual metaphor for humanity's proximity to catastrophe. It measures our collective peril in minutes and seconds to midnight, and we don't want to strike 12. In 2023, the expert group brought the clock the closest it has ever been to midnight: 90 seconds. On January 23 2024, the Doomsday Clock was unveiled again, revealing that the hands remain in the same precarious position.

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.

Masimo CEO Joe Kiani, waging a legal fight with Apple Inc. over a blood oxygen feature on Apple Watch, said that consumers are better off without the iPhone maker's version of the technology. The remarks followed Apple's decision to cease sales of smartwatches Thursday that had the tool — a gauge of blood oxygen saturation known as a pulse oximeter — which had been a heavily marketed health feature on the devices. The move stemmed from a ruling by the US International Trade Commission that found the technology violated Masimo patents.

TikTok is facing a lawsuit from thousands of parents who claim the popular social media app is addictive and exposes children to dangerous and inappropriate content. Since its massive rise in popularity during the pandemic, TikTok has faced incredible backlash for sparking potentially dangerous viral internet trends, the addictive nature of its algorithm, and even for influencing deaths.

A premature Nintendo Switch 2 page appeared on the website of a Japanese retailer. While likely a placeholder, the listing adds to the recent influx of signals that Nintendo's next console is on the horizon.

 Junior staff should spend more time in the office to get quicker promotions, the UK boss of accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers said, as AI is poised to take on routine tasks traditionally given to younger workers.

Data revealed by Famitsu recently revealed that the Nintendo Switch was the highest selling console of 2023 in Japan, but though the PS5 sold just a little more than half of Nintendo’s machine, it still performed better than what Sony platforms have enjoyed in the region in quite a long time.

Apple Inc. is shutting a 121-person team related to artificial intelligence operations in San Diego, leaving many employees at risk of termination, according to people familiar with the matter. The group, known as Data Operations Annotations, was told Wednesday that they would be relocating to Austin to merge with the Texas portion of the same team, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans haven't been announced.

Xbox maker Microsoft surpassed Apple this week to become the world’s most valuable company in terms of market value.

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.

If you enjoy the video game industry, then you might have dabbled into the various behind-the-scenes and making of videos for your favorite video games. Not every game has one available, but for the ones that do, they are always interesting to sit in and watch. Fortunately, for fans of The Last of Us franchise, you had an over hour-long making of for The Last of Us. This provided some behind-the-scenes at Naughty Dog as the developers worked on the game and the actors who stepped in to portray your favorite characters. Nearly a decade ago, this video dropped, which you can view right here. However, we have Grounded II: Making The Last of Us Part II coming our way.

We know it’ll make you feel old, but join us on a journey to seven years ago. The year was 2017; there was no global pandemic or even a hint of it, and the only “dying thing” out there was Nintendo. Allegedly, that is. You see, the disgraceful run of the Wii U had stained many people’s beliefs in The Big N and whether they could “bounce back from such failure.” Even diehards were wondering if the next system, whatever it may be, could save the company. A small preview for the Nintendo Switch had been done months earlier on Jimmy Fallon. But on January 12th, 2017, the showcase reveal of the Switch came, and the world was never the same.

Daedalic Entertainment and Core Engage have announced that the diesel punk city builder New Cycle will be available in Steam Early Access from January 18th. New Cycle takes place in a world that has seen its technology revert back after a catastrophic solar flare. This has led to the modern world collapsing, and the start of new era beginning. Players will need to grow from having a single shack to a bustling city.

YouTube is revolutionising its platform to combat medical misinformation and help users access crucial first-aid information swiftly. Renowned for its diverse content, YouTube has now partnered with authoritative health organisations to prioritise easily accessible, credible instructional how-to videos for handling emergencies.

Just one day after streaming service Twitch announced that it is laying off 500 employees, Discord has joined the parade: A report from The Verge says the company is cutting 170 employees, representing 17% of its workforce. A Discord representative confirmed with PC Gamer that The Verge's report is accurate.

By Alex Heath, a deputy editor and author of the Command Line newsletter. He’s covered the tech industry for over a decade at The Information and other outlets.

It’s time for another pull on the velvet rope labelled “too many games”. In fairness, this time the argument is a touch more involved than perennial moaning about backlogs – to whit, “there are too many games and it’s all the pandemic’s fault”. Nacon’s head of publishing Benoit Clerc has argued that the Covid lockdown years have bred too much investment in new games, and that we’re currently reaping the results in the form of an unsustainable glut of releases.

Daedalic Entertainment and Core Engage have announced that the diesel punk city builder New Cycle will be available in Steam Early Access from January 18th. New Cycle takes place in a world that has seen its technology revert back after a catastrophic solar flare. This has led to the modern world collapsing, and the start of new era beginning. Players will need to grow from having a single shack to a bustling city.

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.

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.

Do you want to get the latest gaming industry news straight to your inbox? Sign up for our daily and weekly newsletters here .

2023 in Review: Another year, another endless news cycle driven by the world's top corporate executives, with moments ranging from cringe-worthy to downright bizarre. While some CEOs seemed to relish the spotlight, Elon Musk chief among them, others were inadvertently thrust into social media's harsh glare. Elon Musk, Sam Altman to Marc Benioff, here are some of the most high-profile management misadventures:

The sense of doom that gripped crypto markets at the end of 2022 following a $1.5 trillion wipeout has 12 months later given way to a very different sentiment: avarice. 

Nintendo has been doing its best to expand its brand beyond “just doing video games” by putting its IPs into the public viewing space in different ways. We know about their success in movies and such via Mario’s animated film, but another big success for them was Super Nintendo World. The park had a rocky start thanks to the pandemic happening right when they were supposed to open, but they bounced back well and have had a great turnout. Plus, they expanded the park into the United States and will be opening a third park location there, too. But, like with everything Nintendo does, expansion was inevitable.

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.

Sales of Sony's PlayStation 5 have crossed 50 million units, the Japanese electronics giant said, pointing to "strong momentum" this year for its flagship gaming console. The PS5 was launched in November 2020, with the world in the grip of the Covid pandemic, and its sales initially suffered because of widespread supply chain problems and a global chip shortage.

For better and worse, 2023 had many surprises that gamers didn’t expect. However, one of the biggest positive surprises was the success of Mario’s animated feature film made by Illumination. The movie had been known about for years, but delays and the global pandemic made people wonder how good it would be when it came out and how well it would be received. The answers were both positive. First, the film got a mostly warm reception from fans and critics, and then the film went on to make a billion dollars. So what does Super Smash Bros have to do with its success?

Nothing seems to foreshadow the end of civilization in the popular imagination more completely than a toilet roll shortage. 

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".

Remember when the pandemic hit?

Do you want to get the latest gaming industry news straight to your inbox? Sign up for our daily and weekly newsletters here .

Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising is essentially an enhanced re-release of the ill-fated Granblue Fantasy Versus — a really good fighting game that had its competitive scene smothered by the coronavirus pandemic, while shoddy netcode meant its online community was all but dead on arrival. Rising, then, feels like a deserved second chance for the 2D fighter, flaunting an overhauled combat system, loads of new features, and, perhaps most importantly, rollback netcode.

"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.

After over two decades, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, also known as E3, is coming to an end. 

E3 2023 is cancelled, and the gaming industry is mourning. Like my colleague Ash Parrish, I’ve always wanted to go, but don’t think I’ll ever get the chance; the industry has changed enough that it’s probably not coming back.

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

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.

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. 

Blue Eye Samurai is coming back for a second season at Netflix. The series debuted on Nov. 3, and got renewed a few weeks later. Netflix announced the second season on Monday with a short video.

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

Nintendo has cancelled a few of their live events in Japan, and the reasons are definitely disappointing.

One of the real-time idle surprise hits of 2020 is coming to mobiles soon. Available on PC and Switch since 2020, The Longing will drop on Android and iOS on December 18, 2023.

 Apple Inc., seeking to reverse a decline in Mac and iPad sales, is preparing several new models and upgrades for early next year, according to people familiar with the situation. 

Sony’s said that PS5 will “attack” the all-important Christmas shopping period this year, as it seeks to meet lofty holiday sales targets and outpace its predecessor, the PS4. While the company’s latest console has been a huge success, it’s first two years were impeded by stock shortages caused by the pandemic. With those issues now overcome, it intends to really establish its authority on the generation this fall.