Game devs skipping GDC 2026 over ICE concerns, US safety fears

https://gamerant.com/gdc-2026-ice-concerns-us-safety-fears-dev-comments/

27 Comments

  1. MotherFunker1734 on

    Coming up next: The FIFA world cup has been a failure because people didn’t want to visit the NAZI USA.

  2. GildedDreams25 on

    it’s absurd to me that the US didn’t realize that turning into nazi germany is going to make less people want to be here. it’s so simple i figured even the idiots currently in charge would figure that out

  3. Soggy-Software on

    Absolutely the right thing to do. Once a country starts executing its citizens it’s time to exclude them from civilised cultures

  4. Countries should start appealing to all these types of groups/conferences and offering to host as a superior alternative to the US.

  5. The US is gonna stop being the host of a lot of international events very soon. You guys can come to Canada.

  6. Challengeaccepted3 on

    Usually countries have two ways to measure power, soft power and hard power.

    Hard power is your military and (some would argue) your economic leverage. The US has a massive amount of hard power. Our military is extremely advanced and sophisticated, and we can crash any economy on earth aside from like, North Korea.

    Soft power is your ability to host events and your cultural power. When GDC 2026 decides not to operate in the US, it’s a sign that your soft power is rapidly deteriorating. Sure it’s a video game event now, but what about a huge sporting event like the Olympics? What about a huge industry conference?

  7. Move it to Canada. Montreal and Vancouver are huge hubs for the gaming industry, and cheaper than San Francisco anyway.

  8. I was at GDC last year and the concerns were the same. A number of people decided it wasn’t safe to come.

    Unfortunately I would say GDC feels like it has been on a decline overall. It’s expensive and SF is even more expensive. Young game devs can’t really afford to go unless their company sends them. Yeah there’s the option to volunteer, but often that role is something students have the time to do, not people going on behalf of their small company.

    I probably won’t get to go again because I changed industries, but I’m curious to see if it’ll be able to survive this for the next few years.

  9. No_Construction2407 on

    There was a story of a tourist in Canada who didn’t know the area, accidentally ended up at the Canada/US border and was kidnapped and held at one of ICE’s black sites for 2.5 months.

  10. eating_your_syrup on

    People would travel to Putin’s Russia to see Olympic games etc. Enough will most likely travel to USA too to fill the stadiums so that it doesn’t look that bad.

    Unfortunately.

    Personally I’m equally uninterested in travelling to either until leadership changes.

  11. I’ll tell anyone from another country to not visit the US, it’s just not safe here right now and for the unforeseeable future.

  12. Honestly this should go for any conference in the United States.

    DEFCON should be relocated to Europe this year – Germany’s got some event spaces that could handle it.

  13. Where I work we’re currently having talks about whether attending corporate events in the USA is worth the risk of a huge fuckup involving our brand. I don’t think MAGA types realize how fucked their country’s reputation has become.

  14. Considering ICE has been confirmed to not only be, abducting legal citizens, abducting immigrants in good standing, physically and psychologically abuse anyone who tries to get in the way or question their “athoritah”, murdering people, and a ton of other stuff I can’t recall at the moment, yeah I’m not surprised.