More bad news for gaming convention-goers and esports fans: Everything is canceled. OK, not everything, but a lot. And not canceled, but postponed or moved digital-only. Just in the last couple of days, we’ve gotten confirmation that several summer events have been set aside or pushed into digital spaces until 2021, all thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
GDC Summer is probably the biggest blow. Gamers will recall that GDC 2020 was postponed from March into a “summer” live event, but now organizers have admitted that won’t happen, that instead it is “moving forward with a plan to transform GDC Summer into an all-digital event in order to best serve [the] community.”
Valve’s Dota 2 The International esports tourney has now been delayed indefinitely, most likely to 2021.
“After extensive consideration of the global health emergency stemming from COVID-19, we have made the difficult choice to delay The International. We have been exploring various date possibilities, but it is likely that the event will need to happen in 2021. Given the highly volatile landscape for local gathering restrictions, virus trajectory, and global travel policies, we don’t expect to have enough confidence to communicate firm dates in the near future. In the meantime, we are working on restructuring the DPC season for the fall, and will be providing more information as soon as we have it. The 10th International prize pool will be funded by 25% of sales of the next Battle Pass, which we are planning to release soon instead of closer to the event itself. However, with our team working from home and things taking longer to complete, the release date of the Battle Pass will be at least a couple of weeks later than usual.”
And of course, Fortnite’s World Cup has moved entirely online, along with all its associated events.
Last month we said we would provide our evolving 2020 competitive roadmap. Today we wanted to provide updates on where we're at with plans in 2020!
— Fortnite Competitive (@FNCompetitive) April 30, 2020
Events for MMOs like EVE Online, Warframe, and RuneScape have all gone digital, as E3, SDCC, and Gamescom have canceled their in-person cons and the fate of PAX West looks dodgy indeed. Just yesterday we covered the cancellation of EGX Rezzed 2020 as well.
