Brought to You by the Fine People At GameDev.World
In the wake of the GDC cancellation, a fundraiser named GDC Relief Fund has been announced by gamedev.world. Game Developer Conference is a huge yearly event for game developers that can help make or break their careers and the project they have been working on for years.
From an outsider viewpoint, what we don’t see is that the majority of the attendees are not the triple-A devs, but rather burgeoning professionals putting blood, sweat, and tears into their project. The process of making games have been often described as hellish, with no profits being made during the years of development with no guarantee at the end either. This means that many of these developers, who had saved up nickel and dime to attend this year’s GDC, find themselves in a devastating situation. This effect is even larger for international attendees, especially those from poorer nations without great airports.
The refunding of the tickets is a nice gesture but in truth is only a fraction compared to visas, lodging, and travel costs that might not be refundable so close to the event itself.
On their site, gamedev.world states that GDC Relief Fund will be a “week-long public fundraising effort, starting March 27th until April 3rd. For the duration of the week, we will present -for free, live-translated, and online- various talks from both marginalized developers and the sponsors that made the event possible. We’ll be raising donations throughout, and every single dollar the event makes will go towards our partners at the GDC Relief Fund and the marginalized developers most affected by these cancellations.”
They will be raising funds through selling video game bundles with itch.io (honestly, what could be better?) and developers and publishers are encouraged to donate their games to the bundle if they’d like to support the cause. As a consumer, all you have to do is to buy the bundles which will be under a pay-what-you-want structure.
If you are a developer affected by the cancellation or know someone that was, head over to gamedev.world for information on how to sign up. We hope that everyone is able to recoup their losses in this event and to keep healthy as well.
Source:Â gamedev.world