COVID-19 has affected the majority of game developers, according to GDC survey
Across the industry, delays and longer working hours are becoming the standard.
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What you need to know
The global COVID-19 pandemic has affected all of life in a big way. For the gaming industry in particular, this has meant delays, shifts in how work is done and more. The organizers at GDC (Game Developers Conference)surveyedalmost 2,500 developers across different studios. The aim of the survey was to discover exactly how the pandemic had affected them. Some of the biggest findings from the survey are:
It’s almost easier to name the big games that haven’tbeen delayedthis year rather than the games that have. Just some of the titles explicitly delayed due to COVID-19 includeThe Last of Us Part 2, The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope and Wasteland 3.
Shawn Layden, former Chairman ofSony Worldwide Studios,recently statedin an interview that the world before the pandemic is “sealed in amber” and that “Everything that was pre-virus is now a historical artifact.”
Still, some are finding creative ways around the problem. Xbox isallowing developersto use a low-latency, 60FPS version of Project xCloud to stream and access Xbox Development Kits.
The ramifications of the global pandemic will no doubt continue even as the next generation of consoles arrive, with theXbox Series XandPS5both scheduled to arrive sometime in Holiday 2020. As the pandemic continues, it’s possible that more games will take a longer time to develop due to using a work-from-home environment.
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Samuel Tolbert is a freelance writer covering gaming news, previews, reviews, interviews and different aspects of the gaming industry, specifically focusing on Xbox and PC gaming on Windows Central. You can find him on Twitter@SamuelTolbert.
