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Kojima's Death Stranding GDC 2020 talk cancelled over coronavirus concerns

Kojima Productions has become the latest to pull out of GDC 2020 due to concerns regarding the coronavirus.

TJ Denzer

February 24, 2020 9:22 AM

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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 has made the difficult decision to cancel our participation at the 2020 Game Developers Conference due to increasing concerns related to coronavirus. (1/2)https://t.co/K6FJtq5Tpx

— Kojima Productions (@KojiPro2015_EN) February 24, 2020

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.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.