Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference 2020, which was to be held in San Jose, California, has been called off amid Coronavirus (COVID-19) fears, a week after the company announced that they won’t be attending or showcasing at the Game Developers Conference 2020 due to the same reason.

Facebook donates a portion of the F8 event’s ticket sales to an organisation in the tech industry and have announced that since there will be no in-person event — and no ticket sales — they’ll be doubling the donation amount to $500,000, which will be given to a local organisation that has been serving locals of San Jose.

“F8 is an incredibly important event for Facebook and it’s one of our favourite ways to celebrate all of you from around the world — but we need to prioritize the health and safety of our developer partners, employees and everyone who helps put F8 on,” Facebook announced.

Facebook is planning to replace the in-person F8 event this year with locally hosted events, videos and live streams and will be sharing the exact details for the same in the coming weeks.“Every year, we look forward to connecting with our global developer community at F8 and sharing our vision for the future that we’re building together. But given the growing concerns around COVID-19, we’ve made the difficult decision to cancel the in-person component of F8 2020.”

Facebook’s AR/VR and Gaming teams have withdrawn from GDC 2020 as the company have also decided to remove their presence altogether at the event by removing their booth footprint as well as advising employees not to attend the show.

Microsoft and Unity have also announced that they’ll not be attending the Game Developer Conference 2020 and instead would showcase sessions and experiences planned for the conference in online streams.

In addition to Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference 2020 and GDC 2020, Coronavirus outbreak also resulted in the cancellation of Mobile World Congress 2020, which was scheduled between February 24-27, after several big tech names backed out of the event.

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