Electronic Arts has announced it is canceling its official participation at GDC 2020 due to Coronavirus concerns.
The publisher has also made it clear it will be “limiting” its presence at other events occurring this year to “protect the wellbeing of our employees.”
“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,” a note issued to USGamer.
” 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.”
GDC 2020 is happening in San Francisco from March 16 to 21 and has already taken steps into securing participants’ health safety, limiting Chinese companies’ presence.
EA’s announcement is just the latest in a row, with multiple developers and publishers skipping Game Developers Conference and this week’s PAX East due to the spreading of the Covid-19 outbreak.
Sony and Facebook/Oculus have also discarded their plans for attending GDC, and so has Kojima Productions as announced yesterday.
The outbreak has already caused several issues in the gaming industry, including the delay of the Nintendo Switch version for The Outer Worlds.
