While health concerns caused by coronavirus keeps threatening the world, games industry is also affected. Epic Games just announced that they will be skipping GDC 2020. They are not the first big developer to skip the event, and it seems they will not be the last.
Here at Epic we were excited about participating in GDC 2020. Regrettably, uncertainty around health concerns has made it unviable to send our employees, and so we have made the difficult decision to withdraw attendance.
Stay tuned for Epic news and more through other channels.
— Unreal Engine (@UnrealEngine) February 27, 2020
The Twitter post shared by the company points at health concerns. Sony, Kojima Productions, EA and Unity already declared that they will be skipping GDC this year. We expect more companies to make similar announcements soon. Considering the situation at PAX, this will not come as a surprise.
We should note that some companies will not completely abandon the event. For example, Microsoft will hold their planned discussions online. We will wait and see what happens at the event. It seems that coronavirus damages the gaming industry as well as the others. We will update you when an announcement regarding this matter is made by Epic Games.
