Coronavirus and Game Dev: How the Industry Reacted to the Epidemic [UPDATED]

We tell you how the spread of a deadly infection affected the largest conferences, device shipments and game sales.

Waivers from PAX East

On February 27, the doors of the PAX East conference opened. One of the traditionally participating companies — Sony — did not come. The management of Square Enix, fearing the coronavirus, canceled all mass events, as well as the arrival of the developers of Final Fantasy XIV at PAX.

Capcom and the Monster Hunter team also refused to participate, although she did not name the reasons.

Waivers from GDC 2020

GDC 2020 is scheduled for March 16. The number of companies that refused it is noticeably more than from PAX East.

Will not appear at the conference: Electronic Arts, Tencent, NetEase, PUBG Corp., Sony, Kojima Productions. Unity and Microsoft joined the refuseniks yesterday. Today — Epic Games. In addition, Facebook employees will not be present personally (but the company has prepared a digital presentation) and Oculus.

It is too early to talk about the disruption of the event. Many companies are still expected at GDC, including Google, Rockstar, Saber Interactive, Bungie, etc. Nevertheless, Kotaku editor Jason Schreier is confident that by the end of today, GDC 2020 may be canceled. The journalist himself also refused to travel to the conference.

Updated: On February 29, the organizers of GDC 2020 announced the postponement of the conference for the summer. They will tell you more about the dates later. Note: a day before the announcement, a number of other companies refused to go to GDC — Activision Blizzard, Amazon and Gearbox.

Cancellation of MWC and F8 2020

Two major developer conferences have already been canceled. The first was Mobile World Congress. In mid-February, she was supposed to collect mobile development leads in Spain. However, it turned out that the coronavirus began to spread in neighboring Italy.

The second was Facebook’s F8 2020. It takes place annually in May, but, as the organizer said today, “… it would be wrong to hold F8 in the absence of our developers from other countries. Given the alarming situation surrounding COVID-19, we have made the difficult decision to cancel the F8 2020 meeting.” Instead, the company will hold video conferences and online seminars.

Supply problems

The coronavirus has seriously slowed down game production. First of all, it hit the console market. 90% of gaming devices imported to the United States are assembled by manufacturers on conveyors in China, where quarantine is currently in effect. That’s what it led to:

One of the main events of this year in the industry is in question — the releases of a new generation of consoles. According to the investment firm Jefferies Group, the PS5 and Xbox Series X may not be released until 2021. This will allegedly happen if their production is delayed for at least a month. And if the consoles are released on schedule, their cost may soar due to the rise in price of production. Neither Sony nor Microsoft comment on the situation.
Niko Partners also agrees with Jefferies Group. “If production does not start at full capacity by the end of the 2nd quarter, this may affect the launch of next-generation consoles. The most likely thing here is limited deliveries or delayed releases,” analyst Daniel Ahmad said.
Interestingly, the long-awaited announcement of the PlayStation 5 was planned for early February. But then, according to the leak, it was postponed to February 29. The venue for the announcement will be Sony Hall in New York.
In Japan, the Nintendo Switch has become scarce. By April, analysts expect, the shortage of consoles from Nintendo will begin to be felt in Europe and the United States.

The impact of quarantine has also affected the VR market, more precisely, the supply of one of the newest devices on it. Valve had to reduce the circulation of Valve Index helmets due to “production deadlines changed due to the epidemic.” Now all the headsets assembled before the outbreak of the virus are sold out. The product will be available again in March.

Also note: Microsoft had to adjust its revenue forecast for the current quarter. The company fears that it will earn not $11.15 billion from sales, but $10.75 billion. The reason is the disrupted supply chain due to the coronavirus.

Transfers of games and events

A number of transfers were also associated with the coronavirus. So, the release dates of the EVE Echoes mobile MMO have shifted, as reported by NetEase. “The COVID19 (coronavirus) epidemic has greatly interfered with our schedule,” the company admitted. Now the beta version of the game can be released only at the end of the year (there is no official date).

The release of the Switch version of The Outer Worlds has also been postponed indefinitely. It turned out that in China, because of the epidemic, the office of the port developers was frozen. Nevertheless, the publisher Private Division promised that this delay will allow the game to be released on physical media.

Of course, the coronavirus has also affected the schedule of esports tournaments with a massive crowd of people. A number of Overwatch League competitions were moved from China to South Korea (despite the fact that COVID19 also spread in it). Blizzard then abandoned these plans. However, there were postponements of tournaments for League of Legends, Pokémon, CS:GO and PUBG.

Updated: it became known that the matches of the professional league League of Legends were transferred to an online format. Until the threat of coronavirus is eliminated, tournaments will be held without spectators.

The Chinese authorities recommend that gaming companies cancel or postpone esports competitions at least until May.

And one more thing

The outbreak of the disease has positively affected the sales of some games. Analysts attribute this to quarantine in China and South Korea: residents of these countries spend more time playing games while locked up. In particular:

Sales of the Ring Fit Adventure Switch title increased fourfold in early February.
Dedicated to pandemics, Plague Inc. at the end of January became the most downloaded paid application in the Chinese iOS store. But yesterday it became known about the removal of the game from the store. The developer of Ndemic Creations said that the Chinese authorities allegedly found illegal content in the title.
China has also launched a game about the prevention of coronavirus — Battle of Pathogens. It was developed by the “daughter” of ByteDance by order of the authorities. Read more about the game in the material App2Top.ru .

What kind of virus?

This is a new coronavirus infection COVID19. Symptoms are respiratory (cough, shortness of breath, fever); possible complications include pneumonia and kidney failure.

An outbreak of coronavirus was first recorded in Wuhan, China (Hubei Province) on December 31. Quarantine was announced first in the city, and then throughout the province. However, the virus continued to spread and acquired the character of a pandemic. It is now rampant in China and South Korea. Infected people were also found in the United States and a number of European countries. As for Russia, a high-alert regime for the epidemic has been introduced in the Amur region and Transbaikalia.

By this minute, according to the WHO, more than 81 thousand people had been infected with the coronavirus. For 2.8 thousand people, a fatal outcome has occurred. Coronavirus vaccines are being developed in China and Russia, among others. But it may take several months to test them.