GDC 2020 has been postponed until ‘later this summer’

GDC Awards to be held virtually

What has felt like an inevitability has finally happened. The Game Developers Conference has been postponed, as the convention’s organizers try to avoid a full-on cancellation.

GDC sent along the following statement:

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.

This comes after many major video game companies pulled out of GDC over the past two weeks due to concerns over the coronavirus outbreak. That list includes: Epic, Unity, Microsoft, Amazon, Activision-Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Oculus, Gearbox, Sony, PUBG Corp, Iron Galaxy and Kojima Productions.

However, one GDC mainstay will still take place, albeit virtually. The Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards ceremonies will be streamed online via Twitch.

As for registered attendees, they’ll be eligible to receive full refunds for their conference pass and lodging (in the event that they booked through the GDC hotel website). Information regarding that process will be available next week. Presumably, plans for this summer version of GDC will be shelved until everyone knows more about how the coronavirus situation plays out.