„Es fühlt sich nicht sicher an“ – Viele internationale Spieleentwickler planen, die GDC in den USA zu überspringen | Geschichten über Grenzprobleme führen in der gesamten Branche weltweit zu weit verbreiteten Reiseängsten

Looking good for the World Cup if people from a convention can’t make it, for a convention that’s much smaller

Yeah I would not come here right now if I was a foreigner. Even leaving and re-entering as a citizen is dicey. The administration will detain you indefinitely for completely arbitrary reasons.

the real damage isn’t just GDC attendance dropping. it’s the long-term signal this sends to international talent. game dev is already a global industry — studios in montreal, stockholm, tokyo, krakow all contribute massively to games that ship worldwide. if the US becomes a place people actively avoid, companies will just move their conferences and eventually their offices too.

we already saw this pattern with academic conferences after earlier travel bans. some moved to canada or europe temporarily and just… never came back. the networking and deal-making that happens at GDC is a huge part of why SF matters for gaming. lose that and you lose the ecosystem, not just the event.

feels like another case of short-term policy decisions creating long-term economic damage that nobody will connect the dots on until it’s too late

Every year GDC becomes less and less relevant due to the decreasing attendance rate. The years prior were due to Covid and it never really recovered. This year is shaping up to be another sad year for GDC.

Its not just this really. Its also there is just lack of funding at the moment so going there is kinda pointless for a lot more people than it used to be.

Have a friend and his family who travelled to the US every year (outside of Covid) at least once per year. Last year they said they would never go again and only went last year because the flights were already booked months in advance. You hear the same stories all over, hell I even used to talk about going on a road trip across the US before any of our friend group got married or had kids and such a thing would no longer be practical but that’s never going to happen now. The US is actively hostile to international visitors and I don’t understand why anyone would want to risk it, not when there are much better places to visit that are safer and more welcoming

The US is not safe. Stay away.

Disclosure I’m a us citizen now living in Canada.

I’m skipping a gamedev conference in Amsterdam. Because it costs money.