Kojima Productions cancels GDC participation

Kojima Productions has cancelled plans to participate at Game Developers Conference 2020 due to concerns over the coronavirus.

The studio was scheduled to deliver two Death Stranding sessions at next month’s event in San Francisco.

Kojima Productions AI programmer Eric Johnson was planning to discuss unique AI challenges faced during the game’s development, while Hideo Kojima was due to give an hour-long talk on Death Stranding’s design philosophy.

“Kojima Productions has made the difficult decision to cancel our participation at the 2020 Game Developers Conference due to increasing concerns related to coronavirus,” it said on Monday.

“Although much-anticipated, unfortunately this cancellation also includes Hideo Kojima’s session on the 19th and Eric Johnson’s session on the 16th.”

PlayStation and Facebook also announced last Thursday that they would not be attending GDC 2020 due to concerns for the health of their employees.

Reacting to last week’s withdrawals, GDC reiterated that it intends to go ahead with this year’s event. It will put extra measures in place to ensure visitor safety, it said.

“We believe that, based on the strict U.S. quarantine around coronavirus and a large number of enhanced on-site measures, we are able to execute a safe and successful event for our community,” it said. “Locally, the Department of Health for both the State of California and the City of San Francisco support the convening of public events. See their statements here: CDPH, SFDPH.

“We are also continuing to follow the latest CDC and WHO guidance, following in the footsteps of other large international events that are taking place successfully at the Moscone Center.”

Sony has also cancelled plans to attend PAX East this week due to concerns over the coronavirus—a decision the Mayor of Boston has asked it to reconsider—while Facebook and Valve have said the virus outbreak is behind stock shortages of their VR hardware, Oculus Quest and Valve Index respectively. The coronavirus has resulted in Nintendo Switch shortages too.