Facebook’s and Sony leaves the Game Dev Conference due to Corona
With Coronavirus showing no signs of abating any time soon, the outbreak continued destruction of the world’s largest trade fair. After the Mobile World Congress scrapped, the big players are now to move away from the Game Developers Conference.
Both Facebook’s Oculus VR division and Sony announced on Thursday that they were withdrawing from the upcoming gathering of video game makers in San Francisco.
“Unfortunately, we are unable to take part in this year’s” Oculus said in a blog post today.
“Out of concern for the health and safety of our employees, dev partners, and the community as a whole GDC, Facebook AR / VR and Gaming teams will not participate in this year’s Game Developers Conference, due to emerging health risks,” they added.
“We still intend to share the exciting announcements we planned to show through videos, online Q & A, and more, and intend to host GDC partner meetings remotely in the coming weeks. We will continue to cooperate UBM, GDC’s parent company, and our partners, and thank them for their efforts, “said the Oculus.
Sony Interactive Entertainment told Gamesindustry.biz that they were also skip the show.
“We felt this was the best option, because the situation related to the virus and the global travel restrictions are changing every day. We are disappointed to cancel our participation, but the health and safety of our workforce has the world’s highest concern, “the company said.
Game Developers Conference (GDC) is scheduled to be held over March 16. March 20. Although the conference is expected to continue to go on as planned, the number of participants may be significantly low.
“Our China-based conference attendees (about 2% of the total attendance GDC) did not participate this year because the US government has restricted the areas of visas and travel contributed significantly to [the corona virus],” the show’s organizers said last week.
According to GDC, “only about 10 out of the 550 companies slated for exhibition show in China.” Coronavirus outbreak has led these companies to withdraw from the GDC in full or only to send the North American personnel.
In addition, MWC, the camera trade show in Japan called CP + and Facebook Marketing Summit has also been called off. Sony also dropped out of PAX East, another video gaming due to event Corona Virus concerns. The second program, which has been disturbed is the RSA Conference on information networks, which will be held next week in San Francisco. Both IBM and AT & T, as well as several Chinese vendors have decided to cancel. Despite the cancellations, RSA plans to continue holding the event.
