The Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco is experiencing a significant decline in attendance from international developers this year. Many feel unsafe traveling to the U.S., citing a perceived hostility and disregard for the safety of travelers, particularly those from minority groups, transgender individuals, or those with outspoken political views.
This reluctance began with a post-COVID reassessment of the event's value but intensified with the 2025 conference under the second Trump administration. Developers point to aggressive border scrutiny, including detentions and deportations based on visitors' public statements, as a primary deterrent.
The main topics covered are the decline in international attendance at GDC, the cited reasons of safety concerns and political climate, and the specific impact of U.S. immigration policies under the Trump administration.
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.”
Out of the COVID, into the Trump admin
Some international developers had been reconsidering their GDC attendance before this year. Many developers who spoke to Ars traced their reluctance to travel for the show back to 2020, when conference organizers canceled that year’s event amid concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic (a smaller Summer GDC was thrown together for later in the year). While health concerns limited some developers’ travel after that, the cancellation also prompted many to reconsider whether the trip had been worth it in the first place.
“The value of in-person events has kind of stepped off since COVID pushed things virtual,” one developer, who asked to remain anonymous, told Ars.
But it was the 2025 show—the first held during President Donald Trump’s second term—that really changed how many developers felt about attending GDC. What started as stories of expanded crackdowns on illegal immigration quickly expanded to aggressive additional scrutiny of tourists at the border. That included tales of visitors being detained or sent back home at the airport, especially if they had a record of public statements likely to run afoul of the current administration.
Meridiano
