After most of the gaming industry’s biggest studios and publishers backed out of next month’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco due to coronavirus concerns, the show itself has been postponed, GDC announced today.
Sony, Microsoft, Epic Games, Unity, Activision, Blizzard, Amazon, Facebook, and more all backed out of the conference to protect their employees from the growing COVID-19 virus, which has claimed more than 2,800 lives worldwide.
“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,” GDC said in a statement. “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.”
The event is not canceled, however. GDC confirmed there are plans to host the event sometime later this year, hoping that the COVID-19 scare is controlled by then.
“We want to thank all our customers and partners for their support, open discussions and encouragement,” said GDC. “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.”
