Exhibition and Travel Cancellations: How the Coronavirus Outbreak Affected the Gaming Industry. Continued (Topic)

The coronavirus outbreak continues to impact all areas of people's lives, including the gaming industry. A few weeks ago, when we published an article on how the coronavirus affected the gaming industry, we did not expect that more such news would start to appear. Therefore, we continue to tell you how COVID 19 affected gaming and continues to do so.

PAX East 2020 situation

At the time of this writing, Boston is hosting one of the first gaming exhibitions this year - PAX East. There has been a lot of hype around it for the past two weeks after Sony announced that they were not going to visit it due to the coronavirus epidemic. The company did not want to endanger its employees, so it decided to avoid this massive event.

Sony were supposed to come to the exhibition with more than 20 games, but the community did not take this news as painfully as it could, for the reason that they did not bring new information about The Last of Us Part 2. p>

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, who sent an official letter to Sony President Kentiro Yoshida, asked her to return to the event painfully. As it turns out, PAX East plays an important role in the city's economy, as the three-day exhibition always attracts a lot of people who spend money in Boston.

Walsh said in a letter that the city government has no reason to assume that it is necessary to restrict entry to the city, since there is one person with coronavirus in Boston. He also called on the company to be prudent, since such actions, on the contrary, only sow panic and reinforce hostility towards a whole group of people of a certain nationality. Walsh asked Sony, as one of the largest players in the market, to return to the exhibition and set a good example for the rest of the companies, to show that they are operating not with fears, but with facts.

The situation, alas, turned out to be diametrically opposite. Two days later, following the lead of Sony, CD Projekt RED, Square Enix, Capcom and PUBG Corp. reported that they would not come to PAX East due to the coronavirus outbreak, also explaining that they did not want to endanger their employees and spectators. For the sake of decency, it should be said that Square Enix and Capcom did not completely abandon, but reduced their program at the show to a large extent.

Japanese studios have also decided to refrain from traveling anywhere at all indefinitely.

GDC 2020 situation

[Updated] After the latest announcements, it all ended with the event being moved from March 16-20 to summer.

[Original Story] GDC 2020 also fell under the distribution, because after the news of Sony, the next day Kojima Production set a new trend, so to speak, to abandon GDC 2020. Jokes as a joke, but after the creators of Death Stranding refused to participate due to the coronavirus in the developer conference, which takes place annually in San Francisco, followed by EA.

Electronic Arts reported that they are canceling all their trips to events of little importance to it due to the epidemic of the disease. They also urge their staff not to travel to San Francisco for the conference.

It soon became known that Microsoft, Epic Games, Unity, Oculuc, Facebook and Sony would not be attending GDC 2020 either. Epic Games completely dropped out, briefly explaining on Twitter that they could not allow their employees to risk their health.

But Microsoft, Unity, Oculuc and Facebook decided to transfer their lectures to digital format in order to somehow participate in the event.

Activision Blizzard, Amazon, Iron Galaxy Studios and Gearbox were the last to withdraw from the show. Everyone except Iron Galaxy and Gearbox will transfer their programs to digital format. Gearbox sadly announced that they planned to share at the conference a cool discovery they made during the development of Borderlands 3.

As for Sony, it is known that they did not plan any loud announcements at GDC 2020, so they also found the strength to refuse their fate.

The organizers of the GDC announced that they will strengthen sanitary safety by placing more locations for hand disinfection, and will also deal with the disinfection of locations. GDC UBM is also partnering with the San Francisco Travel Association to ensure that hotels also offer improved hygiene.

Plague inc. for IOS removed from sale in China

Even at the beginning of the epidemic, Plague.inc, a simulator for creating deadly viruses and diseases, has become the most popular application in China. Many considered it to be a kind of psychotherapy: to see the virus and its spread with their own eyes. However, such popularity played a cruel joke with the developers from Ndemic Creations and the Chinese government blocked the game, citing the fact that it contains prohibited content. This decision was made by the Chinese Cyberspace Administration, and now the developers have their hands tied.

At the same time, the specific reason was not given to her, but they assume that the epidemic is to blame. They say many health authorities have commented that their game is a pretty smart simulator that can actually be educated. They also say they are doing something to help fight the epidemic.

The studio is trying to fight the blocking, but most likely it will end in failure.

It is assumed that the game could have been removed from the Chinese App Store, as the government could have decided that the game was spreading inaccurate information about the virus. But more likely, it was blocked due to the Fake News add-on. In it, you spread the news about a non-existent disease. And according to the rules of the PRC, there should be no fakes in the game. Therefore, the game fell out of favor.

Other incidents

USA gaming company My.Games has postponed its upcoming event, The Big Deal Conference, due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The conference was originally supposed to be held in Moscow from April 10 to 11, but now it will be postponed to the end of the year. However, they motivated this by the fact that they care about the safety of the audience.

But CCP Games have decided to cancel their EVE Fanfest event, which was supposed to be held soon in Reykjavik. Thus, the studio decided to play it safe in advance so as not to deal with a refund later.

We will continue to write about how the coronavirus affects the gaming industry as new information becomes available. However, let's hope that there will be fewer such incidents. Recall that earlier due to the epidemic, a number of esports competitions were noted, and the release of The Outer Worlds was moved to Switch.

The Topic of Article: Exhibition and Travel Cancellations: How the Coronavirus Outbreak Affected the Gaming Industry. Continued.
Author: Jake Pinkman