“I felt compelled to send copies of my itinerary, passport and other IDs, speaker information, etc., to at least three other people who weren’t attending, with the instructions that if I didn’t contact them by a specified time to let them know that I had landed and cleared security, that they should take my information to the Australian consulate,” said JC Lau, a senior producer at Amsterdam’s Twirlbound who has attended every GDC since 2017.

“I scrubbed my social media timelines just in case I posted something that could get me in trouble,” the Godot Foundation’s Coppola told Ars of his preparations for the show.

I have to laugh my country is going off a cliff so fast, at any rate this conference and others like it need to leave the US NOW.

This is not an "eventually we find a new place for international gatherings" kind of thing, the US is collapsing and you are simply not safe here whether you are a US citizen or not, do not come here for your own safety. To be honest I think it is embarrassing that the people running this conference haven't already moved it to Canada at the very least, it places all of the attendees in a real and present danger.

other discussions
 

This week, tens of thousands of game developers and producers will once again gather in San Francisco, as they have since 1988, for the weeklong Game Developers Conference. But this year’s show will be missing many international developers who say they no longer feel comfortable traveling to the United States to attend, no matter how relevant the show is to their work and careers.

Dozens of those developers who spoke to Ars in recent months say they’re wary of traveling to a country that has shown a callous disregard for—or outright hostility toward—the safety of international travelers. That’s especially true for developers from various minority groups, those with transgender identities, and those who feel they could be targeted for outspoken political beliefs.

“I honestly don’t know anyone who is not from the US who is planning on going to the next GDC,” Godot Foundation Executive Director Emilio Coppola, who’s based in Spain, told Ars. “We never felt super safe, but now we are not willing to risk it.”

So much winning.