GDC 2020 has been postponed due to coronavirus

The 2020 Game Developers Conference has been postponed, according to a recent post on its web site, after many developers decided to cancel their plans to attend in the last few days and weeks due to the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). The conference, which was scheduled to take place from March 16-20, may become a GDC event “later in the summer.”

As seen on the GDC web site:

“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.

Having spent the past year preparing for the show with our advisory boards, speakers, exhibitors, and event partners, we’re genuinely upset and disappointed not to be able to host you at this time.

We want to thank all our customers and partners for their support, open discussions and encouragement. As everyone has been reminding us, great things happen when the community comes together and connects at GDC. For this reason, we fully intend to host a GDC event later in the summer. We will be working with our partners to finalize the details and will share more information about our plans in the coming weeks.”

Along with the announcement, GDC also released a FAQ page for people who were planning to attend the conference.

According to the FAQ page, registered pass-holders will be receiving an email about their registration status (with info about full refunds). Also, attendees who made hotel reservations via the GDC hotel web site won’t have to pay any fees or penalties.

Staff at GDC is also planning to make many of the presentations by conference speakers available online for free. If speakers decide to turn in their conversations in video format, the videos will be available via the GDC YouTube channel and “the free part of GDC Vault.”

Also, some videos related to the Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards will be streamed via Twitch during the week that the conference was supposed to have taken place.

[Source]: GDC: FAQ – [Archive].