Despite all of its virus protection, the tech world realizes that it doesn’t live up to deadly biological viruses.
Not only did IDC already predict that this novel Coronavirus Could Drop PC Sales This Year, with many factories closed and demand already falling. But also, many trade fairs and technological events have already been canceled.
The last in this series of cancellations is the 2020 Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. It was to take place from March 16 to 20.
According to an update on the GDC website, Informatech, the organization behind GDC, “made the difficult decision to postpone the game developers conference to March” after “close consultation with our industry partners and from the game development community around the world. “
All major companies withdrew
It is not surprising that the GDC 2020 finally raised its failed hands. GDC 2020 has gradually decreased in recent days due to the withdrawal of large exhibitors.
Sony and Oculus were the first to leave, retiring more than a week ago, followed by EA, Hideo Kojima, PlayStation and Facebook. A day before the cancellation, Microsoft, Epic and Unity also gave up, with Microsoft cites concerns for the “well-being of our teams and the community” because of the “increasing public health risks associated with the coronavirus (COVID-19)”.
With so many of its big players dropping out, it was only a matter of time before other exhibitors followed suit. And, the number of conference attendees is also reported to have dropped significantly – Facebook, for its part, said it “advises all employees not to attend the show.”
The San Francisco Bay Area recently announced two community transmission of COVID-19. This prompted some media to call Northern California “the epicenter of what the authorities call the turning point in the spread of the highly contagious coronavirus”. So having a massive conference with participants from around the world sharing game consoles, VR headsets, and other gaming-related technologies might not be the best idea.
It’s not all bad news, however. Microsoft plans to host an “all-digital event” from March 16-18. He is therefore always ready to make the announcements he planned to make at the conference.
