The organizers of the popular industry insider event, GDC (Game Developers Conference) yesterday confirmed that GDC 2020 has been postponed. The news comes after a number of major video game brands pulled out of the show due to concerns over Coronavirus. Sony, Facebook and Activision had all previously decided to pull out of the event.
This is unfortunate for those who planned on attending the event, but at this point we are seeing a number of major events be cancelled due to the virus which is spreading globally at a rapid-rate. For those who intended to speak at panels or receive awards at GDC, the organization will allow speakers and award recipients to pre-record their presentations and talks in video format, which it will then publish online for free on YouTube and via the GDC Vault. All registrants will receive a full refund within the next 30 days.
See below for the full statement issued from the event organizers:
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.
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.
As this will affect thousands of people Informa also released an FAQ on what to do regarding tickets and bookings. If you have a ticket or booking emails will be sent out with instructions on how to get a refund, which will be paid in full. In terms of hotel bookings any made in the GDC block will not have additional fees or fines imposed on them. The organisers will be sending out emails regarding next steps of this situation. Talks that would have been given at GDC in March will now be recorded by contributers and posted on the GDC YouTube channel. In regard to the Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards a set of talks related to them will be streamed on Twitch from March 16th to March 20th.
Official source: https://gdconf.com/news/important-gdc-2020-update
