Concerns over international travel and the transmission of coronavirus COVID-19 have been plaguing events organisers across the world for the past month, with companies of all sizes choosing to mitigate risk by not attending large expos. In the past fortnight the Games Developers Conference was hit with cancellations from major exhibition partners such as Sony and Square Enix, and early yesterday a flurry of withdrawals from the likes of Blizzard Entertainment and Amazon Game Studios meant that the writing was on the wall. Soon after, GDC 2020 was formally postponed until a later date:
After close consultation with our partners in the game development industry and community around the world, we’ve made the difficult decision to postpone the Game Developers Conference this March.
Having spent the past year preparing for the show with our advisory boards, speakers, exhibitors, and event partners, we're genuinely upset and disappointed not to be able to host you at this time .
We want to thank all our customers and partners for their support, open discussions and encouragement. As everyone has been reminding us, great things happen when the community comes together and connects at GDC. For this reason, we fully intend to host a GDC event later in the summer. We will be working with our partners to finalize the details and will share more information about our plans in the coming weeks.
For more information, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions page.
Having spent the past year preparing for the show with our advisory boards, speakers, exhibitors, and event partners, we're genuinely upset and disappointed not to be able to host you at this time .
We want to thank all our customers and partners for their support, open discussions and encouragement. As everyone has been reminding us, great things happen when the community comes together and connects at GDC. For this reason, we fully intend to host a GDC event later in the summer. We will be working with our partners to finalize the details and will share more information about our plans in the coming weeks.
For more information, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions page.
Exhibitors and attendees tickets will be refunded according to the FAQ, and the indie development community including IGDA, Take This and Game Dev. World are seeking to support smaller organisations significantly impacted by the costs of cancellation. Community events such as the Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards will instead be streamed on Twitch during the week previously set aside for GDC, and organisers are discussing the possibility of having previously scheduled talks videoed and published in the free section of the GDC Vault.
GDC panels are one of the few opportunities individuals within major game studios have to talk publicly about the industry and progress of technology alongside their peers. The event has also seen the debut of major announcements such as platform exclusives and even entirely new platforms, such as was the case last year with Google Stadia. From a Western consumer perspective only E3 and Gamescom are bigger, and even that's arguable.
Worryingly, COVID-19 continues to spread at an accelerating pace. With even the Tokyo Olympics this summer under threat it remains to be seen if GDC will even have a chance of being hosted this summer. Eyes now turn to NVIDIA's GTC in late March and Computex at the end of May.
SOURCE: GDC Postponement Announcement, GameDaily.biz, IGDA Statement on GDC Cancellation
