The coronavirus has caused the postponement of the Game Developers Conference after many of the biggest companies, including Microsoft and Sony, decided to cancel from the annual event.
“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,” the show’s organizer said on Friday.
The hope is to hold the show later this summer, but no specific date was set. In the meantime, GDC plans on refunding all attendees who registered for the event, which was originally slated to be held in San Francisco on March 16 to the 20th.
“We will be working with our partners to finalize the details and will share more information about our plans in the coming weeks,” the GDC added.
In 2019, GDC attracted 29,000 attendees from across the video gaming industry. However, the postponement of this year's show was pretty much inevitable at this point. Although the GDC made no explicit mention why the show is being postponed, exhibitors including Electronic Arts, Facebook, and Epic Games have all withdrawn, citing concerns related to the coronavirus, which has now spread to more than 40 countries. On Friday, both Amazon Web Services and Blizzard decided to cancel as well.
GDC is just the latest technology trade show to become a victim of the coronavirus, which has been disrupting events across the globe. The day before, Facebook decided to cancel its own annual developer’s conference, F8. The company, instead, plans on substituting the event with videos and live-streamed content, in addition to smaller, locally-hosted gatherings for developers.
As for GDC, many conference speakers still plan on making their presentations available online, despite today's postponement. “After speakers (optionally) contribute their talks in video format, they will be distributed on the GDC YouTube channel and the free part of GDC Vault,” the GDC said.
Microsoft is taking a similar approach. In lieu of GDC, the company will be streaming presentations about the company's cloud and game technology over on Game Stack from March 16 to the 18th. So you can still expect some Xbox-related announcements next month.
Further Reading
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