GDC 2020 – The Game Developers Conference is shortly becoming empty – three more companies announced their cancellation of presence!
After Sony, Facebook, Oculus, and Kojima Productions, Microsoft also announced that due to the COVID-19, they will not be in the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. „[…] The health and safety of players, developers, employees, and our partners around the world is our top priority. Especially as the world is experiencing growing public health risks associated with coronavirus (COVID-19). In light of this, we plan to move our presence to a digital-only event March 16 to 18 held on Microsoft.com. This event will feature the majority of our planned game developer sessions and experiences, which will be streamed live and available on-demand.
Join us to learn about the latest in cloud and game development technologies through our technical talks and developer demos. Tune into panel discussions with industry leaders about the evolution of game development, intentionally inclusive game design, the increasing role of online services, next-gen hardware, and the future of game streaming. Get a behind-the-scenes look into design and development decisions made by the creators of Minecraft and Gears of War, and hear from Xbox Game Studios teams Double Fine, inXile, Compulsion, Rare, Obsidian, and Undead Labs […]”, their announcement reads.
The second company, Epic Games cut it quite short: „[…] uncertainty around health concerns has made it unviable to send our employees, and so we have made the difficult decision to withdraw attendance.” The third company, Unity, was slightly more detailed: „[…] the current conditions with COVID-19 (also known as Novel Coronavirus) present too much risk. We take our employees’ wellbeing very seriously. We do not want any Unity employee or partner to compromise their health and safety unnecessarily. We’re advising all employees to refrain from travelling to GDC. We will no longer have a physical presence with a booth, but will instead showcase the great GDC content we’ve been working towards online. Expect more details in the coming weeks.”
So at this rate, everyone will stay away from this year’s GDC, which will run between March 16 and 20!
Please support our page theGeek.games on Patreon, so we can continue to write you the latest gaming, movie and tech news and reviews as an independent magazine.
Become a Patron!
Leave a Reply