Unity CEO John Riccitiello announced that the company is pulling out of this year’s Game Developers Conference, which will take place in San Francisco from 16 March to 20 March.
As the official post says “Unfortunately, this year, after much thought and deliberation, we have made the difficult decision to pull out of GDC 2020. While we did not make this decision lightly, the current conditions with COVID-19 (also known as Novel Coronavirus) present too much risk. We take our employees’ wellbeing very seriously. We do not want any Unity employee, partner, community member or developer to compromise their health and safety unnecessarily.”
Unity is an important part of every GDC. Its game-making tool is one of the most popular in the world for developers big and small across all platforms. As more companies withdraw from these shows, it could pressure other developers and publishers to keep their employees away from these conventions.
They have also revealed that they might not be physically present at the GDC unlike every year but will be present online. “We’re advising all employees to refrain from travelling to GDC. We will no longer have a physical presence with a booth, but will instead showcase the great GDC content we’ve been working towards online. Expect more details in the coming weeks,” said the post.
Other notable companies that have abandoned plans to attend the show include Sony, Microsoft, Facebook, and Electronic Arts. unity has been positive by saying ” We look forward to showing our support at next year’s event. “