GDC 2020 March Event Canceled Over Coronavirus Concerns

The Game Developers Conference is canceled, sources tell IGN, with the show's organizers now confirming it as a postponement to a later planned date. Two developers familiar with GDC's plans told IGN of a planned cancellation ahead of the official GDC announcement, which reads: "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." The official statement goes on to indicate that the organizers "fully intend to host a GDC event later in the summer," however it is unclear what the size or scope of that show is intended to be in comparison to the now cancelled one. "We will be working with our partners to finalize the details and will share more information about our plans in the coming weeks," the statement continued. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=all-the-big-games-coming-in-2020&captions=true"] In lieu of the event, GDC is offering any speakers who planned on giving their presentations at the show an opportunity to make those presentations available online through the GDC YouTube channel and a free portion of the GDC Vault. GDC is also planning to set up streams in order to still hold the Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards shows during the originally scheduled week of GDC. Questions over the state of this year’s GDC began after major companies began announcing they’d be pulling out of the show over concerns about COVID-19. Big studios like PlayStation, Microsoft, Epic Games, Kojima Productions, Facebook, EA, and more have all announced that they would no longer be participating in this year’s event. This prompted attendees to wonder whether GDC would still be the convention they expected it to be, especially since one of the major benefits of attending is for developers to connect and learn from the major players. In Northern California, the state government announced that it was monitoring 8,400 people for COVID-19. Since GDC is hosted in San Francisco, California today’s news of canceling the show is a logical precaution. This is not the first game conference to be shut down by COVID-19 concerns as the Taipei Game Show in Taiwan was also canceled. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN. You can reach him on Twitter.