Today in an official blog post, Blizzard announced that the annual BlizzCon event for this year, BlizzCon 2020 will be canceled due to growing concern about the COVID-19 pandemic. The event is usually held in the 1st week of November every year at the Anaheim Convention Center in California, USA.
In April Blizzard released a statement regarding the BlizzCon 2020 situation, saying it was concerned about the viability of hosting the event shortly following the declaration of a state of emergency in the U.S.
Several weeks ago, I shared an update about our uncertainty around holding BlizzCon this year. Since then, a lot has changed . . . and a lot also hasn’t changed. During this time, we’ve had many discussions about what holding a convention could look like in light of all the health and safety considerations we’d want to make. We’ve also talked about different paths we could take, and how each one could be complicated by fluctuations in national and local health guidelines in the months ahead. Ultimately, after considering our options, we’ve come to the very difficult decision to not have BlizzCon this year.
Saralyn Smith, Executive Producer, Blizzcon
Despite the cancelation of the event, Blizzard is looking at ways to host the event online in some limited way, most likely sometime early next year.
We’re talking about how we might be able to channel the BlizzCon spirit and connect with you in some way online, far less impacted by the state of health and safety protocols for mass in-person gatherings. We’d want to do this as soon as we could, but given that this is new-ish territory and the different factors involved, it will most likely be sometime early next year.
SARALYN SMITH, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, BLIZZCON
BlizzCon 2020 is just one of many other video game events that have been canceled this year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Events like QuakeCon, Gamescom, Tokyo Game Show, and biggest gaming event E3 were all canceled back in early March.
