impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the video game industry impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the video game industry the video game industry has been substantially impacted by the covid-19 pandemic in various ways, most often due to concerns over travel to and from china or elsewhere, and delays in the manufacturing processes within china. part of a series on thecovid-19 pandemicscientifically accurate atomic model of the external structure of sars-cov-2. each "ball" is an atom. covid-19 (disease) sars-cov-2 (virus) cases deaths timeline 2019 2020 january responses february responses march responses april responses may responses june responses july responses august responses september responses october responses november responses december responses 2021 january responses february responses march responses april responses may responses june responses july responses august responses september responses october responses november responses december responses 2022 january responses 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lgbt community long-term care media coverage mental health symptoms migration military notable deaths other health issues politics diplomacy popular culture protests pregnancy prisons religion catholic church hajj science and technology social media strikes suicides telehealth xenophobia and racism society ireland malaysia new zealand russia uk us covid-19 portal overview in contrast to many other economic sectors that are drastically affected by the pandemic, the video game industry has been more resilient. most video game developers, publishers, and operators have been able to maintain operations with employees remote working to sustain game development and digital releases, though some productivity issues arose. with many people globally at home and unable to work, online gaming has observed record numbers of players during the pandemic as a popular activity to counter physical distancing for society, a practice recommended by the world health organization that helped boost revenues for many companies in the gaming industry. there have still been negative impacts on the industry, notably with major trade events like e3 2020 cancelled or postponed which may have impacted relationships between the smaller developers and publishers. this has particularly impacted indie developers who typically use these events for face-to-face meetings with potential partners to gain funding and publishing support, and caused them to have to delay or cancel projects. many esport leagues had to alter plans for their games, transitioning from live events to remote play or cancellation altogether. portions of the sector that relied on physical products, such as retail stores and peripheral makers, as well as those dependent on in-person activities such as quality assurance through playtesting, ratings evaluation, and marketing, also struggled with global stay-at-home orders. as the origin of the pandemic, china is expected to impact the supply chains for electronics, which may limit hardware availability once the pandemic begins to be resolved. however, it did not impact plans for microsoft and sony to release the xbox series x and playstation 5 respectively in fall 2020. cancelled or affected industry events many trade events and expositions for the industry were cancelled or postponed due to bans against public gatherings during the pandemic. e3 2020 was cancelled by march 2020 by the entertainment software association (esa). on 11 march 2020, the esa affirmed that they cancelled the physical event as they were looking to arrange for virtual presentations from its exhibitors, but by april 2020, they determined that the logistics of arranging a virtual event was too difficult due to disruptions from the pandemic, and cancelled the event in 2020, with plans in place to return in 2021. the esa offered the e3 website to help partners support product announcements in lieu of e3's cancellation. additional events were arranged to substitute for the trade event, such as geoff keighley arranging a four-month summer game fest with several game developers, publishers, and other industry leaders to provide announcements and game demos from may to august 2020. other cancelled or postponed events included: the 2020 vancouver retro gaming expo in new westminster was postponed until 25 june 2022. the taipei game show, planned from 6–9 february 2020, was postponed until 25–28 june 2020, but was cancelled in march 2020 due to pandemic's escalation. the mobile world congress, to have been held in barcelona, spain, in march 2020 was cancelled as several of the china-based vendors had to cancel plans. several vendors withdrew or scaled plans back to present at pax east in boston at the end of february 2020, including sony interactive entertainment, square enix, electronic arts, capcom, cd projekt, and pubg corporation. several companies pulled out from the game developers conference (gdc) in san francisco in march 2020, forcing the organizers to postpone the show to later in the year. however, the event organizers devised a scheme to run the gdc as a virtual conference following a similar schedule across the same set of days by using the streaming services with a subset of the planned events that are presented through the streaming media and was made available online a week later. this included the game developers choice awards and independent games festival presentations. the 16th british academy games awards, normally presented at a ceremony in london, were moved to a live streamed event due to concerns over the pandemic. gamescom, which was to be held in cologne, germany, was forced to cancel as germany banned public events through august 2020 following the lifting of the initial lockdown, but organizers will move some portions of the event to be solely online. gamescom asia, which was to be held in singapore, was postponed to 2021. tennocon 2020 was cancelled. paris games week, planned for 23–27 october 2020, was cancelled. tokyo game show that was scheduled to run 24–27 september 2020, was cancelled, though online events were held in its place. egx 2020, planned for 17–20 september 2020, was cancelled, though online events were held 12–20 september 2020. insomnia66, set to take place 10–13 april 2020 at the nec, birmingham was cancelled in march 2020 computex taipei 2020, planned for 2–6 june 2020, was postponed to 28–30 september 2020, but was cancelled in june 2020. the 2020 blizzcon was cancelled. brasil game show 2020, which was planned for 8–12 october 2020, was cancelled. south by southwest in austin, texas, was cancelled, though the sxsw gaming awards were still awarded though an online announcement in march 2020. emerald city comic con planned for seattle, washington, in march was cancelled. twitchcon europe and twitchcon us were cancelled. minecon was cancelled. the 25th quakecon event, planned for dallas, texas in august. the san diego comic con, planned in july 2020, was cancelled. the 17th annual touhou project dōjinshi convention (reitaisai) planned in tokyo, japan, first planned on 22 march 2020, was postponed until 17 may, before being cancelled on 12 april, five days following the initial announcement of a state of emergency made by the japanese government. comiket 98, a dōjinshi convention held in japan, was cancelled. 2020 gaming community expo scheduled for orlando, florida, in june was cancelled. the event moved online as a charity marathon. pax west 2020, originally scheduled for 4–7 september 2020 and pax australia 2020, originally scheduled for 9–11 october 2020, collaborated with egx to host pax online x egx digital, which was held 12–20 september 2020. the 2021 japanese amusement expo (jaepo) was cancelled in an 1 october 2020's announcement. esports most esports events are based on online games, but are typically played in local arenas to reduce network latency between players as well as to provide an audience. the pandemic caused many of these events to either become cancelled or switch to a fully online format for 2020: esl pro league season 11, a counter-strike: global offensive tournament was originally going to be an offline event with the finals taking place at denver, colorado, united states. however, due to the pandemic, esl announced that both the regular season and the finals would be split into two regions: europe and north america. the regular season and the finals were played entirely online. the competitions for non-rhythm games of the ninth season of konami arcade championships (kac), which were to be held from 22 and 24 february at e-sports ginza studio, were postponed indefinitely. this did not affect the competitions within konami's bemani rhythm games, as they were held earlier that month at the japan amusement expo. on 16 december, konami announced that the tenth season in 2021 would restrict participation to japanese players only instead of worldwide as it has been traditionally done since 2012 (which include south korea, asia and united states), as a result of the travel restrictions set by the japanese government; in addition, the finals that were to be held on 6 and 7 march 2021, would be in the ginza studio, behind closed doors. on 7 january 2021, konami extended the qualifying period for the 10th tournament indefinitely while the finals were postponed. on 8 february 2021, konami announced the 9th tournament would be cancelled. on 22 march 2021, a day after the state of emergency was lifted, the qualifier rounds were announced to end on 20 april. 闘神祭2020 (tōshinsai), a cross-arcade game tournament held in japan that is co-organised by ntt-esports and taito, was cancelled. the finals initially scheduled from 16–17 may were postponed to 8–9 august. the overwatch league, in its 2020 season and third overall, planned to implement a home/away approach to regular season play similar to professional sports, with teams travelling across the globe to various homestand events for matches. with the pandemic, numerous changes to the league's plans had to be implemented, which included switching to online matches, reworking the teams' distributions in divisions as some teams were forced to suspend operations, cancelling certain mid-season events, and otherwise reducing the planned schedule of play. during the 2021 season, there were limited homestands by the chinese teams and dallas fuel. to reduce latency during interregional tournaments, teams from the west division (north america and europe) travelled to the university of hawaiʻi at mānoa, as they could connect to a tokyo-based game server via an undersea communications cable link. the playoffs and finals were originally scheduled to be held as live events in los angeles and arlington respectively, but it was cancelled and replaced with the same remote format as earlier due to covid-19 and delta variant concerns. the league of legends rift rivals and mid-season invitational tournaments were cancelled, with the latter being replaced with the 2020 mid-season streamathon, while 2020 world championship would be played exclusively in shanghai using the "isolation bubble" environment. in addition, majority of regional leagues, including league of legends championship series and the league of legends european championship were either played in arenas without audience or switched to online formats. due to national travel restrictions, esports teams of vietnam championship series could not participate in the 2020 world championship and 2021 mid-season invitational. nace was forced to suspend play until april