EA and Kojima Productions to Drop Out of GDC Due to Coronavirus
Just recently, Sony announced that it wouldn’t be attending PAX East this year due to concerns regarding the coronavirus, and now EA and Kojima Productions are also opting out of 2020’s Game Developers Conference (GDC) for the same reasons.
The two companies made their announcements independently, with Kojima Productions taking to Twitter for the announcement. The post reads:
Kojima Productions has made the difficult decision to cancel our participation at the 2020 Game Developers Conference due to increasing concerns related to coronavirus. (1/2)https://t.co/K6FJtq5Tpx
— KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS (Eng) (@KojiPro2015_EN) February 24, 2020
Meanwhile, EA made its announcement through a post on LinkedIn, which reads: “Having closely followed the global situation with Coronavirus and with the recent escalation of cases in new regions, we have decided to take additional steps to protect the wellbeing of our employees including the restriction of all non-essential travel. As a result we are also cancelling our official participation at GDC and limiting attendance to other events. We are continuing to monitor the situation and will adjust guidelines to our employees as we feel is appropriate.”
GDC is an annual event in which developers host panels where they discuss certain aspects of their respective game’s developments processes, giving attendees and other developers rare insight into part of the creation of some of the industries biggest titles.
GDC will run from 16th March - 20th March.
COMMENTS
DanL - 06:11pm, 26th February 2020
Disappointing but understandable. I like watching the GDC conferences and developer talks. I'm subscribed to the GDC's YouTube channel. It's interesting to learn how different individuals and teams approach game development.
franjaff - 05:26am, 27th February 2020 Author
GDC is great. I always appreciate seeing panels about games and topics I'm already invested in and learning more.