Alex Birlo on April 3, 2020
A new wave of canceled gaming events hits the gaming industry as big developers pull out due to delays and complications caused by the current virus outbreak.
First, let us talk about the esports tournaments that were scheduled to happen within the next few months.
Two of them are related to the “Play Pokémon” leagues both the video game and the trading card one. These were supposed to have a North American International Championship in Columbus, Ohio; and a World Championship in London.
Since the Championship Series is now all canceled there is no way to gain championship points anymore. But whatever was earned so far will carry over to the 2021 season.
The other one is the Apex Legends Global Series. Electronic Arts stated that they will be moving more of the activities to the online part of the event.
On the back of their last announcement that they are canceling all live events because of the worldwide virus outbreak, they now clarified that their plan is to add three more online tournaments to substitute for the canceled ones. Each of these will have a prize pool of 100,000USD.
Next, we have Bethesda studios announcing that they will not be hosting a digital version of their annual press conference with the other participants of the “Digital substitute” E3 event.
Pete Hines, the senior vice president of marketing and communications of Bethesda, had announced this via his official Twitter page. He said that “Given the many changes” they are facing now, mainly as a result of the pandemic, the company will have no presence on the digital E3 event. But, even so, he confirmed they have “lots of exciting things to share” about their games and that they will speak about this more in the coming months.
With that announcement, there was also a joint statement from Bethesda and Id Software regarding the cancelation of this year’s 25-th anniversary QuakeCon.
In short, they explain that there is both a health danger to gathering for live events nowadays and a logistical problem with organized planning in these uncertain times. Even though there is no way to know what the situation will be closer to August, when the event was originally scheduled, there is a lot of organizational work that cannot be done in a short time even if the state of emergency will pass closer to the date.
But they expressed their commitment to attempting to come up with a way to still celebrate the anniversary and that the event will return in 2021.
It is expected that live events will be canceled this year, but never the less it is strange to see some not attempting to salvage the situation and at least make some appearance in some online format.
In the case of Bethesda, it can be caused by the fact that they have not done well in terms of development progress on their games and have nothing to show.
Sources:
Pokémon tournaments Polygon article: https://www.polygon.com/2020/3/31/21201777/pokemon-play-competitive-card-game-cricuit-canceled-coronavirus-covid-19
Apex Legends tournaments changes statement: https://www.ea.com/games/apex-legends/compete/news/global-series-stay-and-play
Pete Hines twitter statement: https://twitter.com/DCDeacon/status/1245353441435811841
Id Software & Bethesda joint QuakeCon statement: https://quakecon.bethesda.net/
