Game Developers Conference postponed as major game companies pull out

This year’s Game Developers Conference has been postponed from March to summer in the wake of high-profile withdrawals by companies that had planned to attend. Sony, Microsoft, Epic Games, Unity, Activision Blizzard, Amazon, and Facebook, including Oculus, all canceled plans to attend the show, citing health concerns related to the spread of the novel coronavirus, aka COVID-19. GDC 2020 was scheduled to be held March 16-20 in San Francisco, but organizers say the show — or rather “a GDC event” — will now be held sometime this summer. Organizers released the following statement on Friday: Organizers for GDC say that registered conference and expo attendees will receive full refunds for badge purchases. Organizers also say that conference speakers will be able to make their planned GDC presentations available for free online. If a speaker chooses to provide their talk in video form, it will be uploaded to the GDC YouTube channel and added to the free section of the GDC Vault.