Informa's Redesigned Gaming Festival Loses a Third of Attendees

Last week, the Game Developers Conference took place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, rebranded as the [GDC] Festival of Gaming (GDC). The event welcomed around 20,000 attendees, a notable drop from almost 30,000 last year.

“This was the first year of a bold new concept for GDC,” said Nina Brown, president of GDC. “We are thrilled that 20,000 unique attendees representing our global community showed up from over 85 countries and trusted us with this evolution.”

GDC is a key industry gathering for game developers. The conference is known for offering unique tutorials, workshops, game design challenges, and "rant" sessions where experts air common grievances on stage.

The Reimagined Festival

Informa rebranded the show as a "week of discovery and celebration" with an "expansive roster of networking, presentations, and activations for the entire game industry ecosystem." Changes included simplified pass structures, new session formats, expanded structured networking including a 1:1 meeting program, and replacing the expo floor with a "festival hall."

The show kept "deep, technical, developer-trusted" sessions, peer-reviewed talks, awards, and scholarship passes. Organizers also provided free childcare for children three months and older.

Tonedeaf Rebrand

Despite efforts to keep content focused on the developer community, GDC’s reinvention faced resistance before the show. This resistance reminded organizers that they were not “festivalizing” in a healthy job market. The rebrand’s push for excitement and new formats seemed disconnected from developers’ current challenges.

Several developers shared their views online, including on Reddit. Veteran game designer Greg Costikyan blasted the new framing on LinkedIn as repellent and out of touch, arguing the industry is at its bleakest point in decades. He said, “It’s all technical talks, or happy happy fun stuff. ‘Festival of Gaming.’ Never mind that we are at the most dire point in our industry since the Atari crash.”

According to GDC’s own 2026 State of the Game Industry report, 28% of respondents were laid off in the past two years, rising to 33% in the U.S. Half said their current or most recent employer had conducted layoffs in the past 12 months. Nearly three-quarters of surveyed students worried about future job prospects. On generative AI, 52% said it negatively impacts the game industry, while only 7% said its effects were positive.

Cost and Safety Concerns

The grievances weren’t just about tone or lack of content addressing current challenges. Many raised the high cost of attendance, specifically the loss of the Expo Pass which previously offered a low-cost option between $200 and $399. Organizers highlighted the “unified” pass structure as “clearer, more equitable, and packed with more value,” but the lowest price ticket was the “Festival Pass” starting at $649 for the early rate, without access to GDC Vault, the event’s repository of session recordings and online content.

High travel and accommodation costs for attending events in San Francisco added to the overall cost challenge.

Some community members skipped this year due to safety concerns about border issues, the growing ICE presence in major U.S. cities, and San Francisco’s homelessness crisis.

A Newsweek report asked, “whether the United States can ever become the home for connecting this global industry again, when so many of its important voices no longer feel safe.”

The much larger Gamescom, held annually in Cologne, Germany, is seen by some as valid alternative, although other feel its consumer focus makes it less relevant to developers and more like the now defunct E3.

The Mismatch

It's not just developers that are questioning the value of the event. Industry media site Game and Word called GDC 2026 a "wake" in a report, and raised concerns about the shows contraction and mising brands.

Organizers are betting on “festivalizing” as part of the solution. However, applying the format across industries and geographies requires understanding each community’s nuances and current mindset.

If dealmaking, media energy, and hospitality are core to the business festival experience, then the format may be a mismatch for game developers who prefer to shy away from the gaming industry’s commercial side. The fintech and advertising sectors may align more naturally with an openly commercialized celebration.

Community-First Gatherings

GDC dates all the way back to April 1988 when 27 developers met in founder Chris Crawford's San Jose living room. The event gained sponsorship and professional management over the years through Miller Freeman, which became UBM and now Informa, but its identity always revolved around practitioners' needs. If that core audience feels the event is optimized for ecosystem optics rather than attendee needs, it risks eroding the event’s center of gravity.

Conferences That Work Founder Adrian Segar equated the rebrand not to a festival but to “a funeral where no one is allowed to say anything significant about the dead.”

“It’s sad but not surprising that the Game Developers Conference — a practitioner-focused gathering for more than 30 years — has suddenly rebranded itself as the ‘Festival of Gaming’ while rejecting proposals about the industry’s worsening employment crisis. The organizers are free to do that. But great conferences are participant-driven: they thrive when the people doing the work shape the agenda. It’s becoming clear that many of the designers and programmers behind this $200 billion-plus industry feel they’re no longer being heard. I suspect they’ll desert in droves and begin building their own conferences,” said Segar.

Research suggests attendees value substance over spectacle. A 2025 Freeman report found they judge event success less by production value than by whether it helps them achieve learning, networking, or business goals. They said their most valuable experiences came from peer learning, meaningful networking, and product discovery.

The tension points to a business-model problem. Bringing people together to collaboratively solve shared problems offers huge participant value, but it's hard to make it profitable in the same way as a big stage, a branded installation, and premium hospitality can.

The Business Case for Festivalization

Informa’s transformation of GDC is part of its fast-growing festivals division. The division generated record revenue of $528 million (£397.9 million) in 2025, with underlying growth of 7.7%.

Flagship examples include Cannes Lions and Money20/20, the events at the core of Informa’s acquisition of Ascential for $1.6 billion in July 2024, which led to the division’s creation. The brand of these shows alone was valued at $584.3 million.

The format appeals to investors because it goes beyond the traditional conference by promising more immersive, engaging experiences. It’s also more profitable as it enhances sponsorship opportunities while justifying higher ticket prices.

Despite pre-event backlash, organizers reported a positive community response. Mark DeLoura, executive director of innovation and growth at GDC, said, “We heard loud and clear from our community this week that the redesigned GDC Festival of Gaming is starting to truly respond to their needs.”

The next [GDC] Festival of Gaming runs March 1-5, 2027.

Show organizers were not immediately available for comment.