Affect of COVID -19 on Worldwide Gaming Event

Covid-19 and the Game Industry: News Round-up

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As the Covid-9 Coronavirus continues its spread and has hit pandemic level, there has been a growing impact on the game industry. The game sector’s problems, of course, are trivial compared to the millions impacted and the potential danger to millions more across the world.  However, the earlier Taipei Game Show and Mobile World Congress were previously cancelled amidst concerns around the virus, the potential arrival of the next-generation consoles may – or may not – have been affected, and a number of high profile companies are minimising their attendance of major industry conferences.

Indeed, it can be hard to keep up, such is the reach not just of covid-19 itself, but its impact on numerous infrastructures and ecosystems.

As such, this story will be regularly updated with any news around the impact of covid-19 on the game industry, be it events, releases, manufacturing, supply chain, or other factors.

Events impacted by covid-19 novel coronavirus:

• GDC 2020 has been postponed, with the organisers looking to host some form of the event later in the year. According to an official statement from the GDC team: “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 finalise the details and will share more information about our plans in the coming weeks.

 GDC’s organisers are now streaming talks and sessions intended to take place live during the conference as prerecords, for free on Twitch.

•  The UK’s EGX Rezzed conference, which welcomes consumers and industry, with a view to bringing the to together while focusing to a degree on indie games, has been postponed. The 2020 Video Game BAFTAs, which are aligned to EGX Rezzed, had already moved to digital only.

•  The Reboot Develop Blue event in Dubrovnik has been postponed, with a new start date of October 15th 2020 planned.

•   Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) has pivoted to become a virtual event.

•   Polish game industry conference Digital Dragons has now been postponed until September.

•  An alternative event to GDC, the PLAN B Project, is being organised by the industry to take place in San Francisco, during the dates that GDC was scheduled to take place.

•  GameConnection America, which traditionally runs alongside GDC, has been indefinitely postponed.

•  Following in the path of other major tech companies curtailing their industry-facing gatherings, the Microsoft Build conference has been postponed. (The Verge)

• UK game industry trade body Ukie has moved its Video Games Ambassador relaunch event to online only.

• The Japanese indie gaming festival BitSummit has now been cancelled.

• The BGI has postponed is Games Education Summit until September this year.

•  Mojang has cancelled its 2020 Minecraft Festival, which at the time of writing is considerably far off in September.

•  Twitch has cancelled its TwitchCon Amsterdam event.

• HTC’s Vive Ecosystem Conference will now take place in VR.

•  Google has ‘reimagined’ it’s Google Cloud Next ’20 conference to be a ‘digital first’ event taking place from April 6th-to-8th, 2020. A statement on the event’s website reads: “We are transforming the event into Google Cloud Next ’20: Digital Connect, a free, global, digital-first, multi-day event connecting our attendees to Next ’20 content and each other through streamed keynotes, breakout sessions, interactive learning and digital ‘ask an expert’ sessions with Google teams.”

•  Additionally, Google has now cancelled all physical and in-person elements of it’s biggest global event, Google I/O, (9to5 Google)

•  Facebook has now cancelled its F8 Facebook Developer Conference. A statement confirms: “In place of the in-person F8 event, we’re planning other ways for our community to get together through a combo of locally hosted events, videos and live streamed content. We’ll share additional details on our plans for F8 in the coming weeks.”

•  The vast SXSW, which typically includes some gaming content and numerous creative crafts relevant to making games, has been cancelled.

•  Supercell and Space Ape Games’ Games First London 2020 event has been cancelled.

•  Epic has cancelled its Unreal Fest Europe event, which was due to take place in Prague.

•   The Develop:Brighton Conference scheduled for July, and August’s Devcom have both confirmed they currently plan to continue, but are actively monitoring global events and considering their options.

•  Blizzard cancelled three weeks of events taking place in South Korea between February 29th and March 22nd as part of the Overwatch League “in order to protect the health and safety of our players, fans, and staff“. All Overwatch League events globally have been cancelled for March and April.

•  The Rocket League World Championships has been cancelled.

• Riot has cancelled and reworked elements of its League of Legends European Championships. (The Esports Observer)

•  EA has postponed or cancelled a number of FIFA and Apex Legends events, while some remain unaffected. EA have provided full details here. EA has now cancelled all competitive gaming events indefinitely. (VG24/7)

•  A debut Flashpoint CS:GO playoff in Stockholm has been cancelled, with the event now taking place within a controlled Los Angeles broadcast studio. (ESPN UK).

•  Bandai Namco has now rescheduled various Tekken and SoulCalibur esports events.

•  SNK has delayed its SNK World Championship fighting game esports events.

•  The Chinese League of Legends pro series‘ week two events have been delayed.

•  WESG’s Asia-Pacific finals, due to take place in Macau in February, were also delayed. (Polygon)

•  With little time to go, the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice esports tournament has shifted to be an event without any on-site audience, as a result of the local Polish authorities asking for the event to be scaled down.

•  Developer CCP cancelled its EVE Fanfest community event in Iceland, which has long brought together players and developers to celebrate the distinct online sci-fi game, and guide its development.

• Caution around the coronavirus took USD$100m (£77.2m) from Nvidia’s Q1 expectations.

•  Microsoft and Nintendo are encouraging or asking staff in various locations to work from home.  [UPDATE]: Now EA, CD Projekt Red and Rockstar have joined them.