Kojima Productions Is Skipping GDC 2020

Hideo Kojima and his team have announced they are cancelling their appearances at the 2020 Game Developers Conference due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The famous studio that brought us Death Stranding confirmed in two tweets on Monday that unfortunately they have to cancel both of their GDC sessions. The first one was planned to be on March 16 hosted by AI programmer Eric Johnson. The second one was on March 19 and the host was supposed to be Hideo Kojima himself.

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 (Eng) (@KojiPro2015_EN) February 24, 2020

Although much-anticipated, unfortunately this cancellation also includes Hideo Kojima’s session on the 19th and Eric Johnson’s session on the 16th. (2/2)https://t.co/K6FJtq5Tpx
— KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS (Eng) (@KojiPro2015_EN) February 24, 2020

Unfortunately, this is not the first (and definitely not the last) event to be upended this year by the coronavirus. Previously, Sony and Oculus also decided to skip GDC 2020. On Friday, Boston’s mayor wrote a letter to Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida asking him to reconsider skipping PAX East over coronovirus fears.