The COVID-19 pandemic has had an incredible impact on the gaming industry. With dozens of esports events canceled, multiple conferences moved online, and entire development teams working from home, productivity and the like seem to have been practically mothballed.
One of the biggest cancelations to come out of all of this was the announcement that E3 2020 would no longer be happening. As arguably the biggest gaming event in the year, many people – from the most casual fan to the most dedicated developer – anticipated the event.
With its cancelation, we’ve seen plenty of companies move online. Nintendo ended up doing a Nintendo Direct Mini, GDC 2020 held their talks online and will be holding a smaller event in the summer, and plenty more.
Unfortunately, it seems that Bethesda doesn’t have any intentions of doing the same. The company seems to have been hit hard by the pandemic and will not be holding an online replacement for their E3 presentation.
The news comes from Pete Hines, the Senior Vice President of Bethesda’s Global Marketing and Communications. Hines took to Twitter to make the announcement earlier today.
“Given the many challenges we’re facing due to the pandemic, we will not host a digital Showcase in June,” Hines announced in his tweet, which we’ve placed above. “We have lots of exciting things to share about our games and look forward to telling you more in the coming months.”
Bethesda has been enjoying a good amount of popularity recently with the release of their highly-anticipated brutality-fueled demonic slaughter-fest, Doom Eternal. The title has won them back some much-needed positivity from their fans, many of whom were ready to give up on the well-acclaimed developer/publisher after the resounding failure of Fallout 76.
It’s interesting to see the team deciding to completely avoid a digital showcase, to be honest. Their competitors are mostly moving online to still give fans some sort of news – whether it’s to fill in the days of social distancing and quarantine with good news or to continue building hype to hopefully recount some financial losses from this whole pandemic.
Bethesda also recently announced the cancelation of QuakeCon 2020, which was going to be a special event due to it being the 25th anniversary of the legendary classic. With so many cancelations coming, it’s surprising that Bethesda isn’t at least dedicating a team to create a short announcement to update fans on what’s going on behind their doors.
