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Add another name to the growing list of large events affected by the spread of coronavirus COVID-19. BitSummit 2020, Japan’s largest independent game development festival, has been postponed. The postponement follows the scuppering of E3 2020, the Game Developers Conference, and other major events in the game industry and beyond.
The BitSummit Organizing Team relayed the news via a tweet from the official BitSummit 2020 Twitter account:
Important information concerning BitSummit The 8th Bit pic.twitter.com/QTWyuvUcn1
— BitSummit May 9 -10 (@BitSummit) March 11, 2020
Held in Kyoto, BitSummit was established in 2012 with the goal of “giving Japanese independent game makers a chance to show their games to the world.” Growing from a small industry-only meeting of 200 people, the event broke attendance records over the next seven years, with over 17,000 attendees at 2019’s BitSummit 7 Spirits. BitSummit 2020 would have been “BitSummit The 8th Bit” and run from May 9-10, 2020 at Kyoto’s Miyako Messe Exhibition Hall.
The event is run by the Japan Independent Games Aggregate, an association dedicated to supporting indie developers alongside larger industry sponsors like Sony and Nintendo. BitSummit is open to international developers. In the past, it has hosted such titles as Capy Games’ Below, Stellar Jockeys’ Brigador Killers, Toge Productions’ Coffee Talk, Gemdrops’ Spice and Wolf VR, MyDearest’s Tokyo Chronos, and Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro and White Owls’ The MISSING: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories.
New dates for BitSummit 2020 have not yet been set.
