Seems like bad news for GDC - I wonder if they will provide discounts on their tickets? I would like to go but sadly my work won't cover the cost for me.
I'm kind of ignoring the "human factors" but these companies are pulling out because spreading the infection would be a big PR hit for them and opens them up to law suits. I imagine discounting tickets, or any official way of encouraging more travel (especially in response to transmissions concerns) would be even worse.
GDC isn't the first big conference to get cancelled. World Congress, a huge cell phone conference held in Barcelona every year, was cancelled. It was supposed to happen Feb 24-27. But to your point, there was a #unofficialMWC2020 in response.
Arguably, an unstated reason is that they are still uprooting and replacing/fixing their rendering pipelines, standard assets, having no built-in multiplayer, and the whole dots thing, and I hear they are preparing for an ipo. They are going to be extremely busy this year
Edit: not sure why the downvoted. Their hdrp pipeline doesn’t even support terrain grass yet, and you can’t use line renderers without it throwing a hundred errors at you. This is a huge year of tech transition and it’s been bumpy
