The annual Game Developers Conference was postponed by organizers until summer after many of the biggest companies in the video-game industry canceled plans to attend.

“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,” organizers wrote in a post on the event’s website late Friday. “We fully intend to host a GDC event later in the summer.”

The conference, which had been scheduled for March 16 to March 20 in San Francisco, is a key annual event for engineers and artists who build video games. Facebook, Microsoft, Electronic Arts and Sony’s PlayStation have all announced that they would skip the event.

Those who may already be registered passholders will be receiving emails about their registration status and any next steps regarding full refunds.

Individuals who have made hotel reservations inside the GDC room block will not have to pay penalties or fees associated with their reservations.

In order to allow conference speakers to still participate in the event, many of the presentations that would have been given at GDC 2020 will be made available for free online. After speakers (optionally) contribute their talks in video format, they will be distributed on the GDC YouTube channel and the free part of GDC Vault.

A set of these GDC 2020 talks and the Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards will be also streamed via Twitch during the week that the event would have taken place in San Francisco (March 16th to 20th).