Coronavirus has finally been labeled a pandemic, and with that small change, a ton of things have changed. It seems like almost all of the news that has been reported in the last week or so has something to do with the virus to the point that it is beginning to get challenging to keep track of. For the convenience of everyone involved, we here at The Nerd Stash have taken it upon ourselves to start compiling such news, once a week, for the foreseeable future.
This is your Coronavirus Weekend Roundup #1. Below we have collected all of the relevant news about the ongoing effects of COVID-19 that we have published along with a selection of other articles from a few different sources. We can’t cover everything, but below, you can at least find everything that we covered.
At the top of the week, we got the first piece of negative news: Production on the children’s movie Peter Rabbit 2 had been halted. This was followed Wednesday with a slew of announcements, the first of which was a nice change of pace and actually kind of positive for once; Discord will be temporarily increasing the limits of it’s Go Live feature, allowing for up to 50 people to stream video together at the same time as opposed to the usual 10. We got an update on the cancellation of E3, with Microsoft, Ubisoft, and Devolver Digital announcing live streams (mostly) intended to replace their stage show at the canceled mega-conference. And on the same day, Blizzard canceled all Overwatch League events until at least April.
Thursday saw the real bulk of the film industry news with A Quiet Place II, The New Mutants, Fast and the Furious 9, and Mulan all announcing delays and the hit TV show Riverdale announcing an indefinite halt to shooting. Several prominent late-night shows made the decision to stop filming in front of live audiences, and Disney’s theme parks were made to shut down. The current season of NBA basketball getting canceled actually started causing problems for its digital counterpart and perhaps most disconcerting of all, the thing that put a face to this crisis for many; we found out that Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, had come down with the disease.
We got a bit of positive news on Friday, hearing that Pokémon GO had made various changes to make things safer for its players, even going so far to implement features to make the game viable from player’s homes.
And finally, on Saturday, we heard that Netflix had canceled production on all of its original series, League of Legends and EA suspended all further E-Sports events and TennoCon, the yearly convention for long-running free-to-play juggernaut Warframe was switched to online only.
Next week is shaping up to likely be about as rough. So hunker down, try and stay safe, follow these recommendations (and these!) to the best of your ability, and I will see you back here the same time next weekend for more news on the coronavirus.
