In context: As COVID-19 continues to spread around the globe at breakneck speeds, world governments and corporations have been struggling to cope with the fallout. Thousands upon thousands of employees have been told to stay home from work to mitigate the disease's spread. As more people stay inside, internet usage has skyrocketed, and many telecommunications firms have decided to lift some of the restrictions that come with their internet and data plans.

Indeed, Verizon (as well as several other telecoms) has already agreed to lift

In brief: Google is continuing its push to get more content onto its Stadia platform. It is now offering development kits and funding for projects to small studios that commit to supporting Stadia. Along with the kickbacks and equipment, the Unity team will provide technical assistance to developers in the program.

On Monday, Google announced the Stadia Makers program at its Games Development Summit. The initiative looks to provide small indie developers extra tools to help them self-publish on the Stadia platform.

In partnership with Unity, the program will

Something to look forward to: After years of relative stagnation, the virtual reality industry has begun to revitalize itself. Valve's innovative VR-focused return to the Half-Life franchise with Half-Life: Alyx has launched to critical acclaim, and now reports suggest HP is working with the digital distribution giant and Microsoft to create a "next-gen" VR headset.

We don't know much about the headset at all just yet -- all we have to go on is a placeholder page over on

The big picture: Valve’s first Half-Life game in nearly 13 years has finally arrived and while it’s not Half-Life 3, it’s not just another mundane title to showcase the potential of virtual reality, either. Simply put, Valve has delivered in a big way with its latest effort as evident by the overwhelmingly positive reviews hitting the Internet today.

Here’s a quick look at what some those with early access to the game have discovered thus far.

Valve doesn’t

In a nutshell: Intel's first-generation Lakefield processors are not due out until Q4 2020, but some have been getting their hands on early silicon providing us with a glimpse of what kind of performance to expect. The latest leak shows an SoC designated "Core i5-L15G7" that Geekbench rated better than Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835.

Benchmarks have leaked for another Intel Lakefield SoC. A tweet from InstLatX64 on Saturday revealed Geekbench tests on a

In brief: A previously undisclosed and yet to be patched critical security vulnerability is being exploited in the wild, affecting all recent versions of Windows (7/8/10) and Windows Server. Microsoft is working on a fix, but until then, it's probably best to heed Microsoft's workarounds to mitigate chances of exploitation.

Microsoft posted a new security advisory today ( ADV200006 ), detailing what it's calling "Type 1 Font Parsing Remote Code Execution Vulnerability.

Bottom line: Rocket Lake-S desktop CPUs were initially expected to arrive by late 2020 although at this point, whether or not that is still a realistic expectation is totally up in the air. With any luck, the market will remain stable enough that Intel won't have to adjust its roadmap and bring with it PCIe 4.0 support and integrated Xe graphics.

Intel’s Rocket Lake-S platform is getting some attention this week thanks to a leaked diagram courtesy of the gang over at

Setting the record straight: PlayStation 5 architect Mark Cerny stated last week that the PS5 would be backward compatible with “almost all of the top 100” PS4 games on launch. Rightfully this raised concerns that Sony was setting up to renege on its promise to support all PlayStation 4 titles. According to Sony, this was just a misunderstanding.

On Monday, PlayStation updated its keynote recap, explicitly addressing the concerns over backward compatibility. According to Sony’s Senior Vice President of Platform Planning & Management Hideaki