The Game Developers Conference is a huge event in the gaming world, bringing programmers and designers together from all over the world.
The event, originally scheduled for March, has been delayed due to the rising worldwide fear surrounding the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak.
This conference was set to take place in San Francisco. The organizers announced their decision to postpone the event on Friday, February 28. They said that they, “fully intend to host a GDC event later in the summer,” but provided no actual dates at this time.
This is not shocking, as San Francisco has declared a state of emergency in order to prepare for the spread of the virus.
“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,” the organizers said in their prepared statement.
The fact that several major names in the gaming world had already announced that they were skipping the event this year may have had something to do with the decision.
Facebook, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft had all bowed out of the event. As the coronavirus spreads via exposure throughout Northern California, a number of tech conferences have been postponed or cancelled.
Most recently, Facebook announced that it was cancelling its annual F8 development conference. The annual internal sales meeting for Workday, originally set to take place in San Jose, California, was also altered, and will now be an online only event.
The gaming world has already seen some events cancelled due to the growing fear of the outbreak. Most recently, the Taipei Game Show in Taipei Taiwan was cancelled because of the coronavirus spreading throughout Asia.
“We are deeply sorry to announce the different decision from our committee,” a spokesperson for the Taipei Game show said earlier this year when the event was cancelled. “2020 Taipei Game Show was originally scheduled to take place on February 6 to February 9. However, due to the serious outbreak of the Wuhan Coronavirus, we have decided to postpone the event to this summer. Taipei Game Show is one of the iconic annual networking events. With that in mind, W.H.O. has declared global emergency as Wuhan Coronavirus spreads. Considering mass gatherings like Taipei Game Show increase the chance of cluster infections, the organizing committee has decided to steer away from such unthinkable risks. We sincerely ask for exhibitors’ understanding on such a major decision. The detail of the execution of the postponement will be carefully discussed, and will be announced in the upcoming days.”
It should also be noted that the PAX East game show is currently underway this weekend.
