CORONAVIRUS CAUSES MORE ESPORTS EVENT CANCELLATIONS
It sounds almost like it stems from a sci-fi horror, or a pandemic type-movie to be more exact. The sudden rise of the China-borne Coronavirus has wreaked havoc throughout the entire international scene (because when Asians are good at something, they tend to be pretty darn good!), affecting economic areas of all kinds, among which we can find air travel, regular commerce, and more recently, the very existence of Esports and gaming-related events across the world.
According to recent reports, the Annual Game Developers Conference has joined the number of pre-emptive cancellations, citing a concern for the well-being all those players and fans sure to assist to the event in the coastal city of San Francisco, CA.
Who Called it Quits?
The GDC had been originally scheduled to take place between the dates of March 16 and 20th, and had been planned as a massive exhibition featuring a large host of video-game developers, including Electronic Arts, PlayStation, Amazon, Microsoft and the world-famous Fortnite creator Epic Games (The Crème de la Crème no less!). However, the event wasn’t meant to be, as one by one, each of the developers confirmed they would not be attending the venue.
Raising the Stakes
True dat! The fear is understandable. Just over the weekend, the number of infected persons grew not only in China, but in many other locales around the globe, reaching remote countries like Italy, Russia (FACT! We aren’t hating for the sake of hating), Australia, and some areas of Western and Eastern United States.
The move by the GDC was officially announced by the event organizer on Friday. As can be read in a statement published by Informa online, the cancellation news drew a hard blow to the organizers, who had been working over a long period of time to get every detail right: “Having spent the past year preparing for the show with our advisory boards, speakers, exhibitors, and event partners, we’re genuinely upset and disappointed not to be able to host you at the time… We want to thank all our customers and partners for their support, open discussions and encouragement. As everyone has been reminding us, great things happen when the community come together and connects at GDC. For this reason, we fully intend to host a GDC event later in the summer.” -_- Can we get the new freaking dates? Guess Not! -_-
Who else is Pulling the Plug?
As we mentioned before, the GDC isn’t the only cancellation/postponement suffered by the Esports community. Just last week, Capcom announced the revocation of their Pro-Tour events in New Jersey, California and Belgium. Similarly, the governor of the Polish area of Silesia revoked the rights granted to ESL to host CS:GO and StarCraft II live audiences in the Katowice arena.
Suffices to say, most China-based League of Legends calendar had been scratched waaaaay before, and had been rescheduled to recommence by March 9th, but with the rapid fashion in which the disease is actually spreading… Can we honestly see it happening at all? I sure can’t!
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