GDC 2020 is officially postponed following coronavirus concerns

Multiple companies dropped out of the conference in the past couple of weeks.

What you need to know

• The Game Developers Conference (GDC) announced it was postponing its event in San Francisco in March.
• Multiple large companies pulled out this week, including Microsoft and Epic Games.
• Another GDC event will be held in the summer.

After weeks of speculation, the Game Developers Conference (GDC) announced Friday that it'll be postponing this year's event in San Francisco.

The move comes after multiple large companies pulled out this week, citing fears surrounding the coronavirus. Sony and Facebook were two of the first to announce they weren't attending. Just today, Activision Blizzard, Amazon, and Gearbox announced they were pulling out.

"After close consultation with our partners in the game development industry and community around the world, we've made the difficult decision to postpone the Game Developers Conference this March," the organization posted in a statement. "We're genuinely upset and disappointed not to be able to host you at this time."

GDC did add, however, that it plans to hold a "GDC event" in the summer. It'll have more details in the future. There is no word yet on what the refund policy will be for attendees.

The event was supposed to take place on March 16-20 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Originally, the only people affected by the coronavirus outbreak were companies and attendees from China, but the spread of the disease greatly impacted more organizations.

This is also not the first tech event that's been canceled on account of coronavirus anxieties. Mobile World Congress was canceled back in February. Just this week, Facebook's annual F8 conference and EVE Fanfest were also canceled.

This story is developing.