Add Star Citizen’s CitizenCon 2950 to the growing pile of major MMO and gaming events that have been dislodged from the calendar this year thanks to COVID-19.
“Out of a deep concern for the well-being of our community and as a result of the effects of the current COVID-19 pandemic, we have made the very difficult decision to cancel this year’s CitizenCon,” Cloud Imperium announced today, citing the fact that the LA location currently has a ban on large gatherings and will likely have one for months to come, making it difficult to both hold and plan the event. (Similar reasons have been given by studios like CCP Games and Jagex for canceling their events.)
“A show as large and complex as CitizenCon requires months of planning, and our ability to prepare for the event has stalled. In addition, we don’t have confidence that California and Los Angeles would allow an event as large as CitizenCon to occur even by October. As we monitored the COVID-19 situation with CitizenCon in mind, we saw that many governments around the world were still deep into quarantine, with no guarantee that these measures would be lifted any time soon. We also felt it would be unfair to ask you to begin committing preparation and savings for CitizenCon when the event itself was at risk due to the current pandemic. To say we are disappointed would be an understatement, but given the information we have today, we felt that cancelling CitizenCon was the only responsible choice to make.”
CIG does say it’s aiming to bring the event back in 2021, though it doesn’t know exactly when yet, and it won’t be putting on a digital show this year in place of the physical event. “We still plan to celebrate Star Citizen’s birthday on October 10, but doing so digitally,” the team writes. “This will not be a virtual CitizenCon, but it will be an online celebration with our community.”
Due to the impact of COVID-19, we have made the very difficult decision to postpone this year’s CitizenCon until 2021. Nevertheless, we are still planning to celebrate Star Citizen’s birthday virtually on October 10th.
Read the full update here: https://t.co/anSUbJqrRf pic.twitter.com/imZLHce2gm
— Star Citizen (@RobertsSpaceInd) May 1, 2020
