Disclosure: The Wild Rumpus, a collective to which I belong, have run our Mild Rumpus showcase at GDC for several years and were due to do so again. “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,” the organisers said in tonight’s statement. It’s not yet clear what the alternative “GDC event later in the summer” will be. It’s surely impossible for it to be the same. They say they “will be working with our partners to finalise the details and will share more information about our plans in the coming weeks.” They do still have plans for the GDC that would have been, mind. Several organisations and companies are already organising a GDC Relief Fund. This will include fundraising with a week of livestreamed talks and a game bundle from the gang behind Gamedev.World, 2019’s online free game development conference, for the Relief Fund and “the marginalised developers most affected by these cancellations.” Hoooooo. Several cases of Covid-19 have already been confirmed in California, and an event with such international draw brings the extra concerns of folks flying in from all over the world. It was first discovered in December 2019 in China and cases are now confirmed in 53 countries. Thousands of people coming together from all over then returning is a concern to many. GDC’s organisers first addressed the Covid-19 virus on February 13th, saying that they were monitoring the situation and assuring that increased cleanliness protocols were in place at the venue. They issued increasingly cautious updates as more companies pulled out but as recently as this morning said GDC was on. Their hesitance isn’t a surprise, mind. Cancelling such a huge, expensive, and complex event is not a quick decision or easy procedure. Along with hundreds of presentations and panels from developers and experts, GDC also hosts the Independent Games Festival awards, the Game Developers Choice Awards, the alt.ctrl.GDC showcase of strange controllers, and an industry expo. The biggest chunks of the GDC Expo space were once to be filled by companies who had already pulled out - your Microsofts and Epics and that. Many gaming events are being affected by anti-virus precautions. Today alone, CCP Games cancelled April’s Eve Fanfest, several big companies are skipping PAX East, and the esports event IEM Katowice has been forced to go ahead without anyone in the audience. Header image is from GDC. It’s cropped, resized, and used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.
