While GDC organizers were trying to make the best of what was an increasingly dire situation, the dam finally broke on Friday evening. After one company after another pulled out of the Game Developer’s Conference, those putting on the expo decided it was time to pull the plug.
The organizers posted an update to the official GDC blog.
“After close consultation with our partners in the game development industry and community around the world, weโve made the difficult decision to postpone the Game Developers Conference this March.”
The organization went on to say that they have spent a year getting ready for the event and are genuinely disappointed they are going to have to postpone. That’s an important choice of words because the organizers are staying away from the words “canceled.” The last part of their post was announcing they still want GDC to take place in 2020 in some way, shape, and form.
At the moment, they are looking to hold the convention later in the summer. Of course, that’s going to be an interesting task, as the summer is jam-packed full of video game events, not the least of which is E3.
— Simon Carless (@simoncarless) February 29, 2020
Putting aside the issue of when the event might eventually take place, the other big question of the day is just how the company is going to be handling refunds. That question was actually posed earlier when companies started pulling out of the expo. Some wondered if they were going to be getting their GDC registration fees back.
The people in charge of the convention finally came out and made it clear they are going to be refunding the money. The company won’t give the money back right away, but those who registered will be getting their money back in the coming weeks. One has to believe GDC people will be looking to indeed hold something this summer in order to get at least some of that money back.
