Hasta La Motion!

This year’s Game Developers Conference(GDC) has been postponed from March to summer. Due to Coronavirus outbreak, there have been high-profile withdrawals by companies that had planned to attend GDC 2020.

The event, which has run since 1988, was expected to take place from 16 March to 20 March in San Francisco.

“After close consultation with our partners in the game development industry and community around the world, we’ve made the difficult decision to postpone the Game Developers Conference this March. Having spent the past year preparing for the show with our advisory boards, speakers, exhibitors, and event partners, we’re genuinely upset and disappointed not to be able to host you at this time,” reads an official post on GDC website.

Companies like Sony, Microsoft, Epic Games, Unity, Activision Blizzard, Amazon, and Facebook, including Oculus, all cancelled plans to attend the show, citing health concerns related to the spread of the novel coronavirus, aka COVID-19.

The post further reads, “We want to thank all our customers and partners for their support, open discussions and encouragement. As everyone has been reminding us, great things happen when the community comes together and connects at GDC. For this reason, we fully intend to host a GDC event later in the summer. We will be working with our partners to finalize the details and will share more information about our plans in the coming weeks.”

The organization behind the conference, exhibition company Informa, intends to refund attendees the cost of tickets, although it’s unclear if a system will be in place to transfer tickets to the planned summer version of the conference. It’s also unclear how GDC will fit into an already-packed summer of game events including E3 in June and Gamescom and Pax Prime in August, all three of which may ultimately be similarly impacted by the coronavirus.

In the weeks leading up to GDC, companies like Sony, Facebook, Electronic Arts, Kojima Productions, Unity, Amazon, and Epic all withdrew their attendance. Each cited health and safety concerns regarding the event. All of GDC’s China-based exhibitors also pushed their attendance to 2021, while China-based conference attendees would not be present. Organizers also announced that it would expand its flu season protocol to include additional sanitation measures.

“Even though GDC has committed to refunding the tickets of attendees that haven’t cancelled, many developers around the world do not have a way to refund their visas, lodging, and travel costs. Many worry that they did not just lose the opportunity of attending this years’ conference, but also the possibility to re-route the funds spent to other opportunities throughout the year,” reads the fundraiser announcement.

Organizers for GDC say that registered conference and expo attendees will receive full refunds for badge purchases. Organizers also say that conference speakers will be able to make their planned GDC presentations available for free online. If a speaker chooses to provide their talk in video form, it will be uploaded to the GDC YouTube channel and added to the free section of the GDC Vault.

The conference’s associated award shows, the Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards, will be streamed on Twitch during the week the event would have taken place “so that our community can continue to honor [and] celebrate its best games.”

More than 80,000 COVID-19 cases have been reported worldwide, many of which remain in the Hubei province of China, where the virus is believed to have originated. South Korea has seen an increase in patients with COVID-19, up to 977. A cruise ship docked in Japan, the Diamond Princess, housed 691 confirmed cases. Italy has more than 300 people infected with the virus, while Japan and Iran’s numbers likewise continue to rise. The virus has spread to more than 30 countries.

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FanCode, the multi-sport aggregator platform, is set to exclusively live stream all the cricket matches from the Dream11 European Cricket Series (ECS) and European Cricket League (ECL). The multi-nation tournament featuring cricketing federations from across Europe is an ICC approved event sanctioned by ICC Member federation, Cricket Spain. Through this partnership, FanCode will provide live access, of the exciting and emerging European cricket leagues, to the cricket-loving Indian Subcontinent.

The European Cricket League widely regarded as the Champions League of European cricket features some of the most promising cricket federations from across Europe such as Dansk Cricket-Forbund (Denmark), Association Française de Cricket (France), Deutscher Cricket Bund (Germany), Federazione Italiana Cricket (Italy), Koninklijke Nederlandse Cricket Bond (Netherlands), Federatia Romana de Cricket (Romania), Cricket Russia (Russia), Cricket Espana (Spain) amongst others.

In its second year, the ECL is expected to be bigger and better after the tournament received a thunderous response from the fans across the world. Dream11 ECS, which is slated to kick off from 02 March 2020, is a T10 tournament that will be hosted in 20 cities within 14 countries across Europe. Each city will witness a total of 20 matches bringing the total to 400 matches. On the other hand, the European Cricket League (ECL) will see the domestic T20 winners from England, Scotland, Netherlands and 12 other European countries compete to be crowned the Champions of Europe! The ECL will see 38 T10 matches beginning 31 May 2020.

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ZEE5 has been named as ‘India’s Most Desired Video Streaming Brand’ as per TRA’s recently-released Most Desired Brands 2020 report.

India witnessed a digital explosion 2016 onward due to the rapid increase in smartphone uses and cheaper internet. Since then, digital content consumption, leisure binge-watching has become a norm and, ZEE5 is leading the category in its debut year as India’s Most Desired Video Streaming Brand.

Tarun Katial

Commenting on the award, ZEE5 India CEO Tarun Katial said: “It is a very proud moment for us. A young start-up at heart and being in the business for over two years, we have managed to engage with India’s ever-growing appetite for entertainment and serve them with their favourite content in 14 Indian languages. We are extremely delighted and honoured to be adjudged as India’s Most Desired Video Streaming brand by TRA. ZEE5 today has become ‘Super App’ of India with a depth of offering across content types, genres and languages that is hard to beat. We believe that with our unrelenting focus on producing quality content, building a robust distribution network and technology advancements, we will endure to entertain our audience and continue being the top streaming platform in India on any device at any time.”

The award showcases ZEE5’s leadership position in content, reach, distribution, and the enormous popularity of the variety of shows and movies available for viewing on the platform. It has overtaken all other notable OTT platforms.

TRA Research CEO N. Chandramouli added, “Desire is a longing for a brand irrespective of its need, and the success of a brand is highly dependent on the desire quotient it emanates. The brands which feature in this list have been able to exude a deep magnetic pull that impacts the consumer at a subliminal level. TRA’s syndicated research is based on our proprietary Brand Desire Matrix which measures consumers’ expressions of desire on 36 intangible attributes of a brand”.

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Russian production studio CLAN expresses free love with their “passion” project in honor of St. Valentine. We got a quick look into how this project came about.

We’re possibly going to get a new Wolverine on screen! 

Immortalised by Hugh Jackman for 17 years, the clawed mutant will now be played by Henry Cavill in Captain Marvel 2 alongside Brie Larson as Carol Danvers. Jackman’s stint with Wolverine ended with Logan.

If reports and rumours are to be believed, Cavill will be introduced as Wolverine at the MCU. Since Disney acquired Fox Studios, Marvel has been looking for ways to add a few X-MEN characters into the MCU. Last August, rumours of Cavill joining the Marvel brigade also made rounds.

Earlier in February, Marvel announced that Wolverine will be teaming up with Carol Danvers in the Captain Marvel #17 comic book to be launching in April. Marvel boss Kevin Feige is also now in charge of Marvel publishing.

Captain Marvel #17’s synopsis goes like  – It’s poker night at Casa Danvers, and with Wolverine, Monica Rambeau, Spider-Woman, Hazmat, Jessica Jones and Ms. Marvel all in the game, Carol might just lose her shirt. But who – or what – is THE NEXUS and why is it ruining this much needed R&R!?!

Spider-Man is also rumoured to join Danvers in Captain Marvel 2.

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