Out of concern for the health and safety of their employees, Facebook’s AR/VR and Gaming teams and Sony won’t be attending this year’s Game Developers Conference due to the evolving public health risks related to COVID-19.

GDC brings together an international community of game developers to reflect on the industry’s momentum and look forward to its increasingly vibrant future. Sadly, we’re unable to participate this year.

"We’re removing our booth footprint and advising all employees to refrain from traveling to the show. We plan to host GDC partner meetings remotely in the coming weeks. We’re long-term partners with UBM, GDC’s parent company, and we’ll continue to collaborate with them and our partners in their efforts to support the game industry and gaming community. We plan to be at GDC next year and beyond," Facebook's Oculus said.

Oculus said it still plans to share the announcements it had planned for the show, but in a digital format with videos, online Q&As, and more.

Sony is also skipping yet another major video game convention as the company revealed on Thursday that it will also not attend the GDC in San Francisco next month, citing concerns over the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus. The announcement follows last month's news that Sony would be skipping Los Angeles' E3 convention in June for the second consecutive year as well as the upcoming PAX East event in Boston this month, also due to coronavirus concerns.

"We have made the difficult decision to cancel our participation in Game Developers Conference due to increasing concerns related to COVID-19 (also known as coronavirus)," Sony said. "We felt this was the best option as the situation related to the virus and global travel restrictions are changing daily. We are disappointed to cancel our participation, but the health and safety of our global workforce is our highest concern. We look forward to participating in GDC in the future."