Unity Technologies has pulled out of GDC due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus.

The news was posted to the company's blog by CEO John Riccitiello, stating that the health risk concerning the virus is too great and therefore employees will not be attending the event. 

With Unity having a large presence at the event, this does lead to speculation on whether GDC will go ahead as planned. 

Mobile World Congress 2020, the annual conference that was set to take place in Barcelona at the end of February, decided to call the show off because of "global concern" for the coronavirus.

"Difficult decision"

"Unfortunately, this year, after much thought and deliberation, we have made the difficult decision to pull out of GDC 2020," writes Riccitiello. 

"While we did not make this decision lightly, the current conditions with COVID-19 (also known as Novel Coronavirus) present too much risk. We take our employees' wellbeing very seriously. We do not want any Unity employee or partner to compromise their health and safety unnecessarily.

"We're advising all employees to refrain from travelling to GDC. We will no longer have a physical presence with a booth, but will instead showcase the great GDC content we've been working towards online. Expect more details in the coming weeks."

Both Facebook Gaming and Sony were the first major players to pull out of the event before Electronic Arts chose to withdraw because of the ongoing epidemic.

Similarly Square Enix, Capcom, CD Projekt Red and PUBG Corp. all cancelled appearances at PAX East due to coronavirus concerns.