Published , by TJ Denzer
Published , by TJ Denzer
This season has been a rough one as the world continues to deal with the containment of the coronavirus. Already, many sectors of the tech and gaming industry have been affected in either events or production, and Kojima Productions is now the latest to join the extensive list. Kojima and crew have pulled out of participation at GDC 2020, which included several talks on Death Stranding.
Kojima Productions announced their decision to cancel attendance of GDC 2020 via the studio’s official website on February 24, 2020. According to a post on the website’s news blog, concerns over the coronavirus have forced Kojima Productions to cancel its participation in the event. Both Kojima himself and AI Programmer Eric Johnson were slated to give separate talks on the post-mortem of Death Stranding and the challenges and philosophies that went into the development of the game. Interestingly, though Kojima’s session has been removed from the schedule, Johnson’s session is still up at the time of this writing on the GDC schedule, though Kojima Productions has stated both talks are canceled.
Kojima Productions is following the exit of Sony, Facebook, and Oculus from participation in GDC this year in response to the coronavirus. The three latter companies also pulled out of PAX East in addition to Square Enix, which is limiting its participation to a Final Fantasy 14 booth in lieu of a Final Fantasy 7 remake presence and the participation of staff from Squenix’s Japanese offices. In other corners of the tech industry, Apple and Nintendo have announced that the iPhone and Switch will face shortages and delays due to issues with the coronavirus as well.
As the list of affected sectors in the tech industry grows, so does the urgent need for an answer to the coronavirus and those affected by it. Shacknews will continue to follow the latest developments on these and other affected events as further information becomes available.