GDC cancels tickets of participants from Russia. The first information about this leaked into the public field on the morning of March 21. By the evening, we received an official confirmation of the information from the GDC.
As we were informed by representatives of the PR agency that promotes GDC, the conference really decided to cancel the registration of Russians and refund them money for tickets.
Such a step was taken as part of the corporate strategy of Informa, the parent company of GDC.
At the same time, Informa has not officially published its position on this issue. There was no application for cancellation. The information with the order was broadcast via internal channels.
As can be understood from the comment of the PR agency, we are talking directly about the participants “from Russia”. Exactly how the GDC makes a conclusion about the participant’s country affiliation is unclear.
Karina Lavushkina, the former PR director of Pixonic, was the first to publicly write about the situation on Twitter. The letter, which she shared on a social network, said that the cancellation of the ticket is “in the interests of the event and its participants.”
A little later, in a private conversation with a representative of a Russian company, we were told that several days earlier a similar letter had been received by several employees at once.
It is unknown how many Russian developers and publishers were affected by this, but it is unlikely that we are talking about a large number of people. Very few people have American visas today.
GDC 2022 will be held offline from March 21 to March 25 in San Francisco.