GDC Rescheduled For Summer, League Of Legends And Gamigo Report Increased Demand Due To COVID-19 Pandemic
Another day means another round of COVID-19 related news. Today, we’ve got news from GDC, League of Legends, and Gamigo.
First on the list is Informa Tech’s announcement that the cancelled Game Developers Conference has been rescheduled for August and will be called GDC Summer. The event will run from August 4th to August 6th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. According to Informa Tech, “GDC Summer will be a unique Game Developers Conference experience but will retain the same high level of expert-led talks as the traditional GDC, along with a freestyle two-day expo show floor from August 5-6.”
Next up is League of Legends. Riot Games’ reported on Twitter that the highly-popular MOBA’s North American servers are hitting about 90% of its max capacity as more and more players flock to the game because of the imposed quarantines. Expect login queues and long queue times as the team works on scaling up server capacity. Riot also said that they will be allowing pro-player accounts and League Partners to bypass the queues, a move that, unsurprisingly didn’t sit well with the rest of the community.
And finally, we have Gamigo. The studio’s owners, Media and Games Invest, announced in a recent press release that they have officially started working from home since the beginning of the week. MGI also assured players of uninterrupted operations in spite of the increased demand for their online games.
“[. . .] In Italy and Spain, but now also increasingly in Germany and the USA, the company is registering many new players and increased activity by existing players,” said MGI. “Since MGI has consequently switched from data centers to cloud in the past years, the company can react flexibly to a higher number of players and minimize possible server disturbances.”
Media and Games Invest also says they’re expecting higher revenues due to the coronavirus. “Although it is still too early to forecast a concrete impact on revenues and earnings from the Corona crisis,” said the company, “we expect growing revenues and earnings in the gaming sector based on the experience of competitors from China.”
Staying at home is just one way to help contain the spread of the virus. Watch the video below to learn about other ways.
