GDC 2020 has been postponed thanks to the Coronavirus

We pretty much started this decade with low expectations for the usual silliness to come, but holy crap did the Coronavirus exceed our expectations. Currently wreaking havoc across the lobe, the world is now in a state of lockdown thanks to an extremely bad case of the sniffles, suspiciously eyeing anyone who sneezes and adding extra paranoia to any flight of the damned that features the usual cacophony of coughing and sneezing within the seats of last class.

With borders featuring a harder restriction on travel and tourism taking a big knock, the industry of annual trade conventions has been especially hard hit in the wake of the Coronavirus. Earlier this year, the Mobile World Conference took a massive knock when just about every smartphone manufacturer pulled out of the show and they were forced to cancel.

The latest casualty? The Game Developers Conference, which was bleeding developers and big names in the days leading up to the San Francisco show opening its doors at the Moscone Center. While GDC 2020 isn’t being cancelled, it won’t be taking place for a good while until the Coronavirus is under control and companies feel safe enough to send their employees outside to talk shop. “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,” the official GDC site explained.

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.

It’s a pity, because GDC is usually a fantastic source of information for the inner workings of video games and the systems they run on, especially in a year where new hardware is due for a release. Although at this rate, I’m starting to wonder if the PS5 and Xbox Series X will still make a 2020 release date due to the massive disruption that the Coronavirus has caused in China, home of all your favourite gadgets and their manufacturing teams.

Last Updated: March 2, 2020