Microsoft and Epic Games Reveal They Won’t Be At GDC Due to Coronavirus Concerns

Written by Brandon Hofer on February 27, 2020

News: Two other big companies have chosen not to participate in the annual conference next month in Northern California.

Two new companies have revealed that they will not be attending GDC next month in San Francisco. Both Microsoft and Epic Games have revealed that they have come to the conclusion (like so many others) that it is better to be safe than sorry with the current situation. Microsoft announced this via their Gamestack blog and had the following to say:

”After a close review of guidance by global health authorities and out of an abundance of caution, we’ve made the difficult decision to withdraw from participating at Game Developers Conference 2020 in San Francisco. The health and safety of players, developers, employees, and our partners around the world is our top priority. Especially as the world is experiencing growing public health risks associated with coronavirus (COVID-19).

In light of this, we plan to move our presence to a digital-only event March 16-18th held on www.microsoft.com/gamestack. This event will feature the majority of our planned game developer sessions and experiences, which will be streamed live and available on-demand.”

If you want to watch those streams you can visit the Microsoft Game Stack Twitter to get the full schedule.

Epic Games has also revealed that they will not be in San Francisco next month for GDC. They expressed a similar sentiment that Microsoft did by saying the following:

”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.”

It seems like with each passing day more and more companies are canceling their appearances at these big events. Did you have plans to attend GDC in San Francisco? If so, are you planning on still attending?