GDC 2020 in San Francisco Cancelled Over Coronavirus Concerns

Gamer developers conference

The annual Game Developers Conference (GDC), set to take place from March 16-20 in San Francisco, California, has been postponed. The world’s largest professional gaming conference brings together the industry’s biggest companies to announce new technologies and products.

In a blog post, GDC announced, “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,” added GDC.

The gaming event—which saw over 29,000 people attend in 2019—will not take place in March anymore, but “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,” explains organizers.

Leading up to this postponement, major companies such as Facebook, EA, Sony, Unity, Amazon and Epic pulled out of the conference, due to the international outbreak of COVID-19.

GDC will refund all tickets, while some events will stream strictly only and some presenters are being asked their presentations online.

The city of San Francisco declared a state of emergency earlier this week over coronavirus. Facebook this week cancelled its annual F8 developer conference, set to take place in San Francisco. If coronavirus continues to spread, Apple may need to cancel its unannounced annual developer conference in San Francisco as well.

P.S. - Like our news? Support the site with a coffee/beer. Or shop with our Amazon link. We use affiliate links when possible--thank you for supporting independent media.