Organizers for the Game Developers Conference (GDC) have announced the event has been postponed due to the coronavirus.
In a prior article regarding how the video game industry had been affected by the coronavirus, we reported that Kojima Productions had pulled out of GDC. Over the last week, numerous other developers also pulled out; including PlayStation, EA, Microsoft, Epic Games, and more. Another recent cancellations includes Activision Blizzard.
Now, GDC have announced the event has been postponed. You can find their statement in full below:
“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.”
The coronavirus (also known as COVID-19) has affected many businesses in China, including Google, Apple, Facebook, and more. It has also hindered businesses in Japan, including those centered around anime and video games [1, 2, 3].
The Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, who are mapping the virus’ spread [1, 2]. As of this time of writing, there have been over 84,000 confirmed cases worldwide, and over 2,800 deaths. Over 36,800 people have had a “total recovery.”
Across the United States of America, there have been 62 cases, zero deaths, and 7 total recoveries. It should be noted out of the 62 aforementioned cases, 11 are in California (the state where the conference would have been held), with two total recoveries.
