Facebook has officially announced that they will not be holding their annual F8 developer conference. This is due to concerns with the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and the outbreak that seems inevitable at this point.
Facebook is canceling the “in-person component of F8 2020”, but still remains committed to the city of San Jose as their destination for the mid-week conference. The meetings that have been canceled were scheduled to take place on May 5th and 6th, 2020.
This isn’t the first time Facebook canceled in-person events this year due to this virus. Facebook, along with many other large companies, backed out of the Mobile World Congress. More recently, they also backed out of the Game Developer Conference. Some of the companies that followed were Epic Games, Unity, EA, Sony/PlayStation, Microsoft, and Kojima Productions, just to name a few big ones.
Official Statement
“This was a tough call to make — F8 is an incredibly important event for Facebook and it’s one of our favorite ways to celebrate all of you from around the world — but we need to prioritize the health and safety of our developer partners, employees and everyone who helps put F8 on,” Papamiltiadis says. “We explored other ways to keep the in-person part of F8, but it’s important to us to host an inclusive event and it didn’t feel right to have F8 without our international developers in attendance.”
“We remain committed to the city of San Jose, where we’ve hosted F8, and its community,” Papamiltiadis continues. “Every year, we donate a portion of F8 ticket sales to an organization working to diversify the tech industry. This year, we’re doubling that donation amount to $500,000 and will prioritize organizations serving local San Jose residents. We also typically host local students onsite at F8. Working with the next generation of developers is one of the highlights of what we do — and this year, we will still provide an F8-inspired experience for those students in lieu of hosting them at the event itself.”
Its no small deal that the company keeps canceling these in-person events. It was here last year that Oculus opened up the pre-orders for both the Oculus Quest and the Oculus Rift S. The Game Developer Conference is a place where a lot of gaming announcements come from Facebook too.
You can expect Facebook and Oculus to have a busy Q2 of 2020 announcing their plans for the future of AR and VR.
Coronavirus Scare
Although there is a lot of speculation going around with the outbreak of COVID-19, there isn’t cause for real alarm just yet. The percentage of deaths from this virus are no higher than the common flu. It is smart of Facebook to remove themselves out of the equation for now, but don’t expect this to be a life-changing outbreak.
As for the availability of the Quest and Rift S, there are no updates. Facebook and Oculus are still awaiting the go-ahead from Chinese manufacturers to resume production. Until then, you’ll see the ‘unavailable’ tag online. For more VR news and community updates, make sure to check back at VRGear.com.
