EA Cancels GDC Appearance and Reduces Attendance at Other Events
EA has announced that it will no longer be attending GDC 2020 this year. GDC is set to run from March 16 to March 20 in San Francisco. Sony and Kojima Productions have both already pulled out of the event.
The news broke through a LinkedIn post from Alex Sherer, an ad product development specialist at EA..
“Just received word from corporate, and EA will be limiting our presence at GDC, cancelling our participation in official GDC events, and all EA employees have been advised to not travel to San Francisco for the conference.”
Sherer’s post was confirmed by Gamespot, who reached out to EA for a statement.
“”Having closely followed the global situation with Coronavirus and with the recent escalation of cases in new regions, we have decided to take additional steps to protect the wellbeing of our employees including the restriction of all non-essential travel. As a result we are also cancelling our official participation at GDC and limiting attendance to other events. We are continuing to monitor the situation and will adjust guidelines to our employees as we feel is appropriate.”
Coronavirus has made a massive impact on global affairs, and the video game industry is no exception. Nintendo is having trouble keeping up with Switch manufacturing due to the virus. The Switch version of Outer Worlds has been delayed. The virus is also responsible for the cancellation and postponement of several gaming events and tournaments.