The Coronavirus has had a heavy effect on the gaming community over the last handful of months, as it has on the world at large. Many gaming events, including entire competitive seasons of League of Legends such as the LPL, have been postponed or outright canceled. Today, we received news of the latest cancellation.
Blizzard has announced that they will no longer be attending this year’s Game Developers Conference, citing fears of the Coronavirus development that continue to ravage the world. This announcement comes after the Game Developers Conference was already postponed.
“Blizzard will no longer attend this year’s @Official_GDC due to growing concerns related to COVID-19. The health and well-being of our teams is our highest priority,” Blizzard announced in their tweet, which we’ve embedded below. “The conference is and has always been an important event for our developers, so we look forward to participating in the future.”
As of now, the GDC hasn’t made any sort of statement on the withdrawal. While they did announce the postponement, they haven’t given any updates since then (which makes sense, given that the postponement was only just announced on the 28th of February). However, because of this, we don’t know when the event will be held, with the only information being that the event will hopefully be in the Summer.
Blizzard will no longer attend this year’s @Official_GDC due to growing concerns related to COVID-19. The health and well-being of our teams is our highest priority.
— Blizzard Entertainment (@Blizzard_Ent) February 28, 2020
The withdrawal may have some fans nervous. It seems like every day comes with new news of a canceled or postponed event, and many that are intending to go to upcoming events, especially in the East, may be concerned that they’ll be facing the situation of their event being canceled.
However, the real concern shouldn’t be recreation, but safety. While it’s certainly a blow to anyone who was looking forward to seeing Blizzard at the Conference, Blizzard has to make the decision that’s going to keep their staff safe.
One might be thinking that Blizzard’s departure was premature, and it could be that their departure has done some damage to the event. The official announcement of the postponement came on the same day that Blizzard decided to drop out. Some may be wondering if the event was postponed as a direct response to Blizzard dropping out, as they were undoubtedly a sizeable draw for audiences. On the other hand, it could have been unnecessary for Blizzard to pull out at all, given that GDC is now postponing the event to a safer time, so who knows? Either way, there’s a good chance that postponing the event was in discussion for quite some time, as this isn’t the sort of decision one makes spur-of-the-moment.
