The Coronavirus continues to affect the world on multiple levels. From tragic deaths to impacting numerous industries we are seeing it’s effects on a global scale. Epic Games and Microsoft are latest to announce that they will not be attending GDC. The Games Developer Conference is scheduled from March 16th to March 20th. This year it is being held in San Francisco, California. These two companies are not alone in their decision either. Sony and Facebook made their announcements just last week as well. Joining in these growing ranks are Electronic Arts, Capcom, Kojima Productions, and Square Enix. There’s even more with Oculus, Unreal, Unity, and Kowloon to ad to the list. At this rate some are doubting if GDC 2020 will even continue as planned with so many notable absences.
The Games Developer Conference is not the only industry event being affected by the spread of COVID-19. Sony and Facebook also included PAX East in their cancellations. Earlier in the month NVIDIA announced they would not attend this year’s Mobile World Congress or MWC. The next big gaming event is E3. The Electronic Entertainment Expo is one of the largest events of the year for the video game industry. It too is held in California. Sony had already pulled out, again, from E3. We’ll see if they plan another separate event as they have done in previous years. Microsoft’s new Xbox gaming console is expected to be a big showcase for E3.