Yet another company has decided to withdraw from this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco: Microsoft. The Xbox developer announced on its Game Stack Blog today that it will be the latest in a long line of video game companies to forgo the event due to health risks brought on by the recent outbreak of COVID-19, or “coronavirus” as its more commonly called, in countries like China and the United States.
Having been in existence for nearly thirty years, the Game Developers Conference has served as a platform for developers to show off upcoming titles and hardware, as well as share ideas with each other and celebrate the year’s achievements in the gaming world via the annual Game Developers Choice Awards. However, the event has found itself losing many guests including Kojima Productions and EA this year due to the onset of coronavirus, which has already claimed the lives of up to 2,700 people as of this writing. This outbreak has sent shockwaves throughout the fields of entertainment and commerce over the course of the past month, and the gaming industry is no different.
According to Kotaku, Microsoft made the announcement that they will be skipping the 2020 GDC due to the coronavirus outbreak on the company’s Game Stack Blog news outlet earlier today, choosing to instead livestream the announcements it had planned for the event regarding the upcoming Xbox Series X console, and Project xCloud streaming service, as well as feature Xbox Game Studios game development sessions, over the first three days of the event from March 16th through 18th. Microsoft also usually holds a separate ID@Xbox event in San Francisco to show off new indie games coming to Xbox, but there is no word yet as to whether or not this will be canceled as well.
Microsoft is only the latest company to skip the GDC this year due to the coronavirus, as earlier this week both EA and Kojima Productions elected to withdraw from the event, and Facebook recently decided to announce their plans for the VR Oculus headset via a livestream not unlike what Microsoft is planning. Earlier today, Epic Games also announced they would not be attending this year’s GDC event. Additionally, Sony recently pulled out of the PAX East 2020 Presentation last week, and some fear that the outbreak could lead to the planned holiday releases of both the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X being delayed
While it’s unfortunate that so many developers have had to remove themselves from the GDC due to the coronavirus, the health and safety of employees and presenters should always come first, especially if the company can just make its planned announcements via livestream instead. Although the death toll of COVID-19 is still rare at this time, it’s better to be safe than sorry as concern about the illness grows. It’s still unclear how these withdrawals will impact the 2020 Game Developers Conference, but hopefully the event can carry on without any major health risks, even with many of the video game industry’s heavy hitters, such as Microsoft, sitting it out.
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Source: Kotaku
