Epic Games’s announcement is only one of the many corporate withdrawals from GDC due to coronavirus, officially designated as COVID-19 by the World Health Organization. Despite numerous cancelations, the show is scheduled to proceed as planned.
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Worried or anxious readers should note that despite being very contagious, Coronavirus has rather low fatality rates. Nonetheless, to avoid the risk, many companies have dropped from GDC, including CD Projekt Red, Electronic Arts, Facebook, and by extent Oculus, Kojima Productions, Kowloon Nights, Microsoft, PUBG Corporation, Sony, Square, and Unity.
Not only are these major names in the gaming industry, but one look at GDC 2020’s schedule or convention floor plan is enough to show the viewer the sheer amount of time and space which these companies were supposed to take up. What GDC currently aims to do in order to fill these numerous vacancies is currently unknown.
As previously mentioned, the departure of Epic Games, as the developer of both one of the most popular games in the entire world, as well as one of its most popular engines, is doubly punishing for GDC. With Unity, another massively successful 3D game engine, also absent from the conference this year, GDC has a critical lack of support from engine creators. As well, with every company that drops, the ability for networking, imperative to any industry conference, is greatly diminished.
As of yesterday, according to GDC, the conference will still be occurring. However, this announcement was notably made before the further cancellations of Microsoft, Unity, and now Epic Games. It’s also important to note that San Francisco itself is currently in a declared state of emergency due to Coronavirus. Due to the increasing complications since GDC’s previous announcement, whether the event will actually go forward as planned is still unknown.
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