As the novel coronavirus pandemic’s impact is felt across the globe, shutting down everything from international travel to the NBA to markets, it continues to encroach on gaming as well. Here’s what we’re looking at this morning.
GDC, which canceled its conference before the curve, will be streaming many of its talks and programs instead.
“Thanks to submissions from many of the original speakers who had talks accepted for GDC 2020, organizers will be streaming speaker-recorded versions of the talks they would have given in person, for free all week (from 9am to 5pm PT) from March 16th through 20th. The Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards ceremonies will also stream virtually starting at 5pm PT (8pm ET) on Wednesday, March 18th for free on GDC’s Twitch channel.”
Blizzard’s Overwatch League has suspended live events until at least May.
— Overwatch League (@overwatchleague) March 11, 2020
More and more gaming companies are continuing to implement work-from-home policies. ArtCraft Entertainment, which is working on MMORPG Crowfall, announced the measure yesterday.
We started a mandatory work-from-home policy today at @ArtCraftEnt for @CrowfallGame . I suggest other companies to do the same.
— J Todd Coleman (@jtoddcoleman) March 12, 2020
MassivelyOP is already a remote business with writers in three countries and many states; we’ll continue operating as long as we’re physically well enough to carry on.
There’s a bit of good news: Discord announced that it will be changing its streaming limits to make it easier to work and learn from home using the platform.
An update from us regarding COVID-19: pic.twitter.com/gKUXvvsqrs
— Discord (@discordapp) March 11, 2020
The virus has been determined to have infected nearly 130,000 people, 1300 of those in the US, with 4700 deaths globally. Please take care of yourself and each other.
More on the impact of the virus on gaming:
MOP's been covering the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on online gaming since January 2020, and we're still going from behind our own quarantines, both to keep up with the news and be a source of entertainment and comfort too. Stay abreast of the big MMO impacts with us, but please be safe and care for your communities above all else.Everyone at Funcom is set up well for working remotely and we do not expect this to have significant impact on our games and live services.
Our game servers will remain fully operational.
Thank you for your understanding and please stay safe.
— Funcom (@funcom) March 12, 2020
Be safe and for life’s sake, take it seriously. It isn’t to be taken lightly and the death rate in some areas of the US so far has been much higher than what was reported for the virus initially.
The infection rates are also much higher than reported, those are just tested and verified cases.
People who take it lightly and spread it all over because of that, it just irks me to no end.
It’s not the time for festivals and conventions. We can do so very much from home these days, hopefully we all take great advantage of that.
Many people have lost loved ones to this already. Knowing the virus and how bad it’s spreading, it’s very likely that some of us here are going to lose people to it. I’m actually tearing up thinking of it.
We could have and should have done a better job containing this. Just be safe and know it’s probably in your area far before it’s reported to be. You should be acting as if it is there now, no matter where you live. It’s extremely likely that it actually is there and unreported.
Sometimes when the boy cries wolf, there actually is a wolf coming. It’s too bad we have been so used to stuff sort of like this that was mostly contained that too many of us were not taking this seriously to begin with.
No convention is worth the chance.
In another piece of COVID-19 news, an analysis of infections in Singapore and Tianjin showed that between 2/3 and 3/4 of the infected caught the virus from someone who at the time hadn’t yet developed symptoms. This means that just avoiding people who show symptoms isn’t very effective; a convention could have bouncers at the entrance taking everyone’s temperature and rejecting any attendees who show even a slight fever or coughing, the risk of spreading the infection would still be nearly the same.
And a Brazilian high official who took a selfie with Trump and Pence at Mar a Lago, and might have dined with them, just tested positive for COVID-19.
If you watched Don’s speech last night – he was looking a bit frazzled. And he cancelled an event today. Let’s get some rumors started baby!
Doesn’t change the fact the US president and vice-president both were in the presence of an infected person for a good while, as proved by photos and videos. Meaning the virus could even be circulating inside the halls of power.
Not sure if he has contracted the virus — it seems to take a while for clinical tests to detect it and days (or, in some cases, even weeks) for the first symptoms to start showing, so it’s too early to tell. But if one of the most protected persons in the whole planet can be exposed, so can we.
…that wasn’t a rumor though. It’s been confirmed by a number of sources I believe.
This is NO sneezing matter here peoples!
I don’t understand why now, of all times, Bree is forcing all of us MOP writers to travel to her home and sneeze on each other. She calls it the “thunderdome” but it seems unsafe to me…
Did Elliot finally find your password?
Two writers enter… one writer leaves.
Shit is getting serious. Corona could be our modern day Dust Bowl.
It’s been serious, just too many people have been taking it lightly and saying not to worry. It’s been different than the other outbreaks in the past and if you paid attention from the start, you could see how different this one was.
The death rate is much higher than the flu, yet it is low enough to allow it to spread through many people rather than quickly kill off the hosts, and it has a very long incubation period in comparison to the flu types we are used to.
Many more people have it in the US than what is reported because the testing rate in the US hasn’t been that high. Too many people took it too lightly and we didn’t get it contained. We could have locked it down in the US, but people weren’t taking it seriously enough at first to do so.
There are areas of the US where the death rate has been about 10% (Washington) and the vast majority of people still have it so that number will be even higher in the end. That’s extremely serious for a virus that spreads as much as this one does.
The truth is that in the end, we may all be exposed to it and it may become a seasonal thing that arrives each year with the cold and flu season, but the more we can contain and delay this, the better off we are as far as fighting it.
As things stand now, there’s a good chance about 70%-80% of the world population will catch it.
Prevention is still important because if we don’t spread those cases as much as possible then we face the possibility of 5%-10% of the population needing urgent, immediate care at the same time, which will overwhelm health systems across the globe.
The death rate seems to be fairly high — potentially above 10% — for people who don’t get medical attention. This means that overloading our capacity to treat the infected will result in a huge number of otherwise avoidable deaths. Just look at how higher the death rate in Iran is — where, thanks to the economic embargo, the government isn’t able to get or produce much needed medical supplies.