The Game Developers Conference (GDC) may have been postponed to the Summer, but the organizers are still moving forward with some pre-planned talks that will be livestreamed through Twitch starting next week from March 16-20. These talks, formerly panels, will take place from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm PST, and will consists of numerous topics in regards to the video game industry. In addition, GDC will also stream their annual Independent Games Festival and the Game Developers Choice Awards, both of which will be on Wednesday, March 18.
Informa, the events organizers, are also going to keep all talks archived in the GDC Vault online, and will be accessible for anyone to watch for free. This also includes any additional submissions that GDC accepts and is added to the talk schedule. The full schedule for all of the upcoming talks to be streamed will be unveiled on March 13, which is this Friday. GDC will also be accepting submissions leading up to next week, as they will amend the schedule as much as it becomes necessary.
While this is an excellent way for Informa to give back to those who were looking forward to GDC, the effects of postponing the event in general have been devastating for numerous developers in the video game community. It began with plethora of studios, which included Microsoft, Sony, EA, and others announcing that they would not attend the event due to their concerns of the Coronavirus.
The writing was on the wall as Informa saw the inevitable, and announced that GDC was officially postponed until sometime in the Summer. However, we wouldn’t be surprised if the event was pushed back even further, or worse, canceled altogether. There has been no sign of the Coronavirus slowing down, and multiple conventions have been either canceled or delayed as a result. This was most evident when the ESA officially canceled E3 2020, the most anticipated and hyped up gaming event of the year.