NEW YORK, Feb 29 — Microsoft has announced that it will be joining those who were supposed to be some of the GDC’s most significant exhibitors—Facebook, Sony, Unity, and Epic Games—in dropping out of the San Francisco conference.
With the 2020 Game Developers Conference just a few weeks away and the spread of the coronavirus still increasing, exhibitors scheduled to present at the event have begun dropping like flies. On Thursday, Microsoft announced that, like Facebook, Sony, Unity, Epic Games, and a handful of other tech brands, the company has cancelled its plans to present.
Alternatively, Microsoft will host a 100 per cent digital event from March 16 to 18 which will showcase most of the talks, demos, and panel discussions that were planned for the 2020 GDC. Interested people will be able to either stream the sessions and experiences online or will be able to view them on demand.
Considering that the conference is just less than three weeks out and some of the biggest exhibitors will no longer be present, it’s likely that the GDC will meet the same fate as other major conferences like the Mobile World Congress which was cancelled about two and a half weeks before it was supposed to kick off.
As of time of writing, the conference was still scheduled to go on as usual from March 16 to March 20; however, in the wake of these significant companies withdrawing their presence, online game conferences like NotGDC (March 16-22) and LudoNarraCon (April 24-27) could potentially gain momentum. — AFP-RELAXNEWS
