Game Developers Conference 2025
IT & Technology Community Hobbies Entertainment & Media Games
San Francisco, USA
17-21 Mar 2025
Organizer:
GDC
Venue:
Moscone Convention Center
Frequency:
1 year
Event website:
Game Developers Conference
The USA's premier gaming convention
In the gaming industry, there’s one conference that you can’t ignore and that is Game Developer's Conference or GDC in short. The conference and expo combo has been around since 1988 when it was a rather informal event with 27 developers in attendance held in a living room in San Jose. Now it’s a juggernaut that sees the hottest new releases from companies as big as Amazon, Epic, Google and Intel. GDC has turned into an industry benchmark, which predicts the next wave of major trends in gaming and the platform where cutting-edge advances in developing software have been announced first. The conference program is first grade given how focused it is on facing head-on the challenges of today and offers a number of lectures, panels, and roundtable discussions. The expo section features game development tools and services and promotes games nearing their release dates.
Game Developers Conference 2025
The 2024 rendition of the Game Developers Conference will be hosted between 17.03.2025 and 21.03.2025 as a live event. The hosting location will be the Moscone Convention Center, and the venue will not feature the latest Covid-19 safeguards. This is due to the USA lifting its pandemic-relates restrictions.
Accommodation
Trade Fair Trips Ltd presents you with an effortless way to plan your business trip to San Francisco and find the perfect hotel for your stay. We cater to budgets of all sizes and can supply you with the best hotel rates during the Game Developers Conference. You tell us how many people are in your party and how much you’re willing to pay. That’s all we need to know in order to make your online hotel booking for the Game Developers Conference. Convenience is high on our list so it’s important to place you in a hotel near The Moscone Center and reduce your commuting time. Once you’ve handled your reservation, you can turn to Trade Fair Trips Ltd for logistical support. Maybe you wish to book a meeting room with A/V equipment. Or you’re in need of a contractor to build your exhibition booth. We are on the job!
On foot:
Not advisable when travelling from San Francisco Airport (SFO)
Not advisable when travelling from South San Francisco station (Caltrain)
By car:
15 minutes when travelling from San Francisco Airport (SFO)
12 minutes when travelling from South San Francisco station (Caltrain)
By public transport:
40 minutes when travelling from San Francisco Airport (SFO)
35 minutes when travelling from South San Francisco station (Caltrain)
Hotels near Game Developers Conference
| Hotel | Stars | Distance to fair | City | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Comfort Inn & Suites San Francisco Airport North | San Francisco | on request | Request | ||
|
InterContinental San Francisco | 0.45 | San Francisco | on request | Request | |
|
Handlery Union Square Hotel | 0.8 | San Francisco | on request | Request | |
|
Warfield Hotel | 1.2 | San Francisco | on request | Request | |
|
Adante Hotel | San Francisco | on request | Request | ||
|
The Bartlett Hotel and Guesthouse | San Francisco | on request | Request | ||
|
Hotel Fusion, a C-Two Hotel | 0.85 | San Francisco | on request | Request | |
|
BEI Hotel San Francisco | 1.6 | San Francisco | on request | Request | |
|
Axiom Hotel | 0.85 | San Francisco | on request | Request | |
|
Staypineapple, An Elegant Hotel, Union Square | San Francisco | on request | Request |
Game Developers Conference is an annual event, taking place in the United States of America and changes locations frequently. Currently, it’s going to be held twice in San Francisco, California at the Moscone Center. Editions are frequently scheduled for five days in the middle of March and are open to industry professionals, hopefuls who want to make it in the game industry and gamers invested in the latest releases. Informa is the official organiser for the event. There are different sets of opening hours for the conference and the expo part, the latter of which will run for three days in total. The expo portion will be open from 10:00 am in the morning until 18:00 pm in the afternoon on the first two days and until 15:00 pm on the last day. The Moscone Convention Center is ideally located close to the 280 and 101 freeways and parking is sufficient, so driving there is easy. There are also Muni bus lines and the BART to take you to the conference grounds.
“This industry has the combination of creativity, technology and passion, which makes it one of the most inspiring industries to work in. I come to the Game Developers Conference every year since 2001 and I love it, because every year you see something that is so new and so mind blowing that you ask ‘how did they do is’. The show changes every year,” – Roger Chandler, VP of Developer Programs and Initiatives, INTEL;
“We’ve been coming to GDC for probably 15 years now. Really to just bring awareness to INSOMNIAC GAMES. It’s a great opportunity to great in front of everybody. The interaction is fantastic. We’ve had a line around the booth,” – Carrie Dieterle, Chief People Officer, INSOMNIAC GAMES;
“GDC is the perfect place to network. In terms of DIGIPEN, it’s the right place where we need to be for getting prospective students to hear about DIGIPEN and to also get them jobs after,” – Maddie Caswell, Outreach Manager, DIGIPEN Institute of Technology.
Game Developer's Conference has made quite the jump from its early days as a small conference. In 2019, the international conference and expo hit a record-high number of trade visitors – 29,000! With 550 exhibitors on the expo floor and over 780 lectures and other programming items as part of the conference, GDC indeed placed itself front and centre for the gaming industry in the US. The audience consisted of the public and every professional involved in the gaming processing chain – developers, engineers, trainees, distributors, programmers, artists, producers, game designers, audio professionals, business leaders, publishers, press, and investors.
Game Developers Conference 2022
The Game Developers Conference was held as a hybrid event from 21.05.2022 to 25.03.2022. It was hosted at the Moscone Convention Center during the Covid-19 pandemic. Due to this, the venue featured safety measures such as social distancing and the mandatory wearing of face masks. Despite the global situation, over 17,000 attendants took part in the event, including 12,000 in person and 5,000 online. There were also over 200 exhibitors and more than 1,000 speakers.
Game Developers Conference 2023
GDC's 2023 edition was a hybrid trade fair that featured over 28 000 participants. It consisted of a live aspect held between 20.03.2023 and 24.03.2023 and a digital one hosted between 27.06.2023 and 29.03.2023. The hosting location for the live section was the Moscone Convention Center which did not feature Covid-19 safety measures. This was due to the country lifting its domestic pandemic-related restrictions.
Game Developers Conference 2024
The 2024 edition of the Game Developers Conference was a live trade fair hosted in the Moscone Convention Center. It was hosted without instating Covid-19 safety measures between the dates 18.03.2024 and 22.03.2024. It featured approximately 30,000 attendees.
