May F8 Developer Conference Is Canceled By Facebook Due To Covid-19 Outbreak

Facebook has announced that they have canceled their developer conference that was supposed to be held in McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California on May 5 and 6. Due to the growing concerns over the novel coronavirus outbreak, Facebook will look into holding local events instead.

Facebook’s statement reads as following:

“This was a tough call to make – F8 is an incredibly important event for Facebook and it’s one of our favorite 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. We explored other ways to keep the in-person part of F8, but it’s important to us to host an inclusive event and it didn’t feel right to have F8 without our international developers in attendance.”

Facebook’s F8 is a large event comparable to Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference with more than 5,000 attendees last year alone. Meanwhile, the WWDC by Apple is set to be held one month after Facebook’s. Although no announcement has been made regarding postponing or canceling, Apple may consider the same option this year.

Facebook will hold local events and live-stream content as well as videos instead. This is just one among many major tech conferences that have been canceled due to fear of covid-19. Mobile World Congress that is held annually in Barcelona have been canceled while Game Developers Conference scheduled in March has major players such as Sony, Unity, Microsoft, Kojima Productions, Facebook, and EA dropping out as well.