Following withdrawals from high profile exhibitors such as Microsoft, Epic Games, Sony and Kojima Productions, organizers for the Game Developers Conference announced Friday that the event would be postponed.

“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,” wrote the event’s organizers in a statement. “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.”

Crucially, the organizers noted their intent to “host a GDC event later in the summer,” according to the statement.

The event’s organizers promised that emails would be forthcoming to all registered attendees, outlining next steps concerning refunds on passes and accommodations booked through via a GDC website.

On Feb. 20, Facebook and PlayStation were among the first to announce that they would be canceling their appearances at the event due to concerns about the spread of coronavirus. Over the following week, other exhibitors followed suit, a steady drip of cancellations. Amid the pullback, a number of companies, including Facebook and Microsoft, announced that they would be replacing their physical presence at the event with online presentations.

Some of the cancellations followed a Tuesday announcement from San Francisco Mayor London Breed in which she declared a state of emergency to secure funding for proactive coronavirus preparation. Since that announcement, government officials in California have announced the presence of a coronavirus patient in the state, a Solano County woman, and have outlined efforts to find residents that the patient came into contact with.

At the time, however, the text of Breed’s announcement emphasized that there had been “zero confirmed cases of novel coronavirus (covid-19) in San Francisco residents.” Because the measure was explicitly labeled as a proactive one, and risk of contracting the disease was considered low, GDC’s organizers insisted that the show would go on as planned — absent a few exhibitors.

“Locally, the California Department of Public Health, the San Francisco Department of Public Health, and the San Francisco Travel Association continue to support the convening of public events, and we are moving forward as planned,” wrote the event’s organizers on their website.

Ultimately, however, the event could not go on as planned.

GDC is far from the only event to be hobbled by coronavirus. PlayStation withdrew from PAX East in Boston on Feb. 19. In the esports world, the Overwatch League’s ambitious international event schedule was severely curtailed by the spread of the virus, prompting travel changes and canceled matches. On Thursday it was announced the Intel Extreme Masters Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament scheduled to take place this weekend in Katowice, Poland, would be played in front of an empty arena, with fans barred from attending.

Immediately after the announcement, gamedev.world, a global conference for developers, announced a week-long fundraiser running from March 27 to April 3 in support of the GDC Relief Fund. The Fund will help marginalized developers hurt by the event’s cancellation.

“Even though GDC has committed to refunding the tickets of attendees that haven’t cancelled, many developers around the world do not have a way to refund their visas, lodging, and travel costs," reads the statement on the gamedev.world website. "Many worry that they did not just lose the opportunity of attending this years’ conference, but also the possibility to re-route the funds spent to other opportunities throughout the year.”

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