"I Do Not Feel Safe": Inside the International Exodus from America's Biggest Game Developer Conference

As GDC 2026 opens today in San Francisco, dozens of international studios and developers are staying home—and the reasons go far deeper than cost.

The Game Developers Conference has been the beating heart of the global video game industry for nearly four decades. Every March, tens of thousands of developers, publishers, investors, and creators converge on San Francisco's Moscone Center for a week of talks, deals, and the kind of face-to-face networking that no Zoom call can replicate. But this year, as GDC 2026 opens its doors on March 9 for a reimagined "Festival of Gaming" running through March 13, an unprecedented number of international attendees are conspicuously absent [1][2].

Their reasons are stark, personal, and deeply political.

The Numbers Tell a Grim Story

The GDC's own 2026 State of the Game Industry survey, based on responses from more than 2,300 game industry professionals, quantifies the scale of the problem in sobering detail [3][4]:

• 31% of non-U.S. developers surveyed have already cancelled plans to travel to the United States
• An additional 33% are reconsidering future travel plans
• 47% of LGBTQ+ workers responding have cancelled their U.S. travel plans, with another 33% considering it
• 60% of international industry leaders and investors say current U.S. immigration policies have impacted their ability or desire to do business with American companies
• 17% of U.S.-based respondents say it has become harder to hire or retain employees following recent legislative changes

Source: GDC 2026 State of the Game Industry Survey

Data as of Jan 29, 2026CSV

These are not hypothetical anxieties. They represent real cancelled flights, pulled conference registrations, and business relationships reconsidered.

"Cancel. Genuinely. Cancel."

When developers began asking prominent Dutch-Egyptian game designer Rami Ismail for travel tips ahead of this year's conferences, his advice was blunt: "Cancel. Genuinely. Cancel" [5][6]. Unless travelers are "white, and fit the racist, sexist, and supremacist ideal of Trump's US, or can pass as such," Ismail warned, they already have reasons to be rejected at the border. "Any rejection or detention at the border is a permanent mark against entry, forever."

It is advice that has resonated across the industry. Callum Cooper-Brighting, CEO of UK-based Netspeak Games, told Game Rant that "there's no way in good conscience I could send an employee there when I'm not willing to take the risk myself" [7]. His company, which he describes as inclusive and "woke," will not be attending GDC 2026. "I raised $2 million at PGC London and $12 million at Gamescom in Cologne and felt absolutely safe in those places," he said—a pointed contrast.

Cassia Curran, founder of Curran Games Agency, outlined the hierarchy of concerns she has heard from European and Canadian clients: San Francisco perceived as "unpleasant and expensive," a desire to protest U.S. government aggression toward their countries, concerns about being forced to share social media communications at the border, and personal safety fears related to ICE [7].

The ICE Effect

The escalation in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity has transformed what were once routine business trips into exercises in risk calculation.

Operation Metro Surge, launched by the Department of Homeland Security in December 2025, deployed thousands of federal agents to the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area in what DHS called the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out [8][9]. Two U.S. citizens—intensive care nurse Alex Pretti, 37, and Renee Good—were shot and killed by federal agents during operations in January 2026. At least six people have died in ICE detention facilities so far this year, following a two-decade high of 32 deaths in ICE custody in 2025 [10].

For international game developers contemplating a trip to San Francisco, these incidents are not abstract policy debates. They are visceral, headline-grabbing evidence that interactions with U.S. law enforcement can turn lethal.

"I can barely get into the US under the Democrats," Ismail told Aftermath. "The Republicans are straight up disappearing people, mate" [6].

Transgender Developers Face an Impossible Choice

Perhaps no group faces a starker dilemma than transgender developers. Executive Order 14168, signed on January 20, 2025, effectively bars the U.S. from issuing passports with an X gender marker and requires that passport sex markers match the holder's biological sex at birth [11]. For trans people living under their legal gender in their country of origin, this creates what one developer called "an impossible situation."

Vee Pendergast of CODE NZ, based in Australia/New Zealand, stated plainly: "I do not feel safe in the country" [5]. Another European developer identified only as Cassandra described attendance as "impossibly unsafe" due to her trans identity and publicly stated anti-Trump positions, adding that the current political climate has partially caused delays to her studio's game [5].

The timing carries a bitter irony. GDC 2026's own Game Developers Choice Awards will posthumously honor Rebecca Ann Heineman—the pioneering trans game developer, Interplay co-founder, and 1980 National Space Invaders Champion—with the Ambassador Award on March 12 [12]. Heineman, who died in 2025, spent decades advocating for the LGBTQ+ community in gaming. That her legacy is being celebrated at a conference many trans developers feel they cannot safely attend underscores the contradictions at play.

Border Horror Stories

The fear is not speculative. Developers shared accounts of past and recent incidents that inform their decisions.

Paul Dean, a UK developer based in Vancouver, described being held for eight hours at the U.S.-Canada border during a routine GDC trip in 2015, with a border agent placing a hand on his sidearm while Dean's possessions were searched in detail. He has received secondary inspections multiple times since [5].

Multiple Māori developers from New Zealand reported being stopped at passport control and aggressively questioned—apparently mistaken for Mexican travelers despite holding New Zealand passports [5]. Chantal Ryan, a developer from Adelaide, Australia, described being detained by U.S. immigration based on racial profiling due to her half-Indian heritage. She has since skipped planned trips to the United States entirely [5].

These accounts paint a picture of a border system that international developers experience not as a formality but as a gauntlet—one where the wrong name, the wrong appearance, or the wrong social media post can mean hours of detention, denied entry, or worse.

An Industry Already Under Strain

The exodus from GDC comes against the backdrop of an industry in crisis. The game sector has hemorrhaged jobs at an alarming rate: approximately 8,500 in 2022, 10,500 in 2023, and a devastating 14,600 in 2024, the worst year on record [13]. The GDC survey found that one-third of U.S. respondents had been laid off in the past two years [3].

Source: Game Developer / GDC State of the Industry Reports

Data as of Jan 29, 2026CSV

Add to this the impact of U.S. tariffs—38% of survey respondents say tariffs introduced in 2025 are negatively affecting their business expenses, revenue, or financial decisions [3]—and the picture that emerges is of an industry where the economic case for attending an expensive San Francisco conference was already weakening before immigration fears entered the equation.

The Organizer's Response

GDC President Nina Brown has sought to reassure the community. "The safety of our community is always our top priority," she stated, noting that the festival has expanded safety training for all staff, offers security escorts upon request, and has established a 24/7 safety line [2][14]. The conference has also worked with local officials and legal experts to monitor U.S. policy changes.

In a practical concession, GDC 2026 has slashed ticket prices—a simplified pass structure starting at $649 for five days makes it 45% more affordable than last year's event [14]. Brown said the organization "respects those individuals' decisions" about attendance while noting that over 30% of GDC Vault content is freely available for those who cannot attend in person.

Organizers have maintained that ticket sales are "tracking in line with expectations" and that they have not observed a noticeable decline in international registrations [15]. But several industry observers note that official registration figures may mask the real picture: smaller studios pulling back headcount, replacing senior delegates with junior staff, or quietly shifting their most important meetings to other venues.

The European Alternative

The beneficiaries of America's loss are becoming clear. European conferences—Gamescom in Cologne, Nordic Game in Malmö, PGC London, Devcom—are absorbing displaced business [7][16]. Several business development leads have told reporters they are relocating sensitive meetings to later events in Canada and Europe, where colleagues face fewer immigration hurdles.

The shift may prove durable. Gamescom's organizers have noted that most of the industry already attends their various events across Europe, Asia, and South America, with one organizer suggesting there may be "maybe no need" for a U.S. version [16]. Nordic Game, the leading games conference in Europe, has seen growing interest from developers who previously considered GDC essential.

"I raised $2 million at PGC London and $12 million at Gamescom in Cologne," Cooper-Brighting emphasized—a data point suggesting that the networking and deal-making functions of GDC are not irreplaceable [7].

The Larger Stakes

Source: GDELT Project

Data as of Mar 9, 2026CSV

The media volume tracking above illustrates how coverage of GDC's immigration controversy has intensified as the conference date approached, with spikes correlating to the State of the Industry report in late January and the event's opening week in March.

What's at stake extends well beyond one conference. The U.S. video game market generated an estimated $141.8 billion in revenue in 2025, representing roughly half the global gaming market [17]. The industry's creative and commercial vitality depends on the kind of international cross-pollination that conferences like GDC have historically provided. The International Game Developers Association has long noted that global mixing at conferences correlates directly with new collaborations, studio formation, and talent mobility [16].

When that mixing is suppressed—by visa barriers, safety fears, or hostile immigration enforcement—the effects ripple outward for years. Emerging markets and underrepresented creators are disproportionately affected, precisely the voices that push the medium's boundaries.

Studios still planning to attend describe rigorous pre-trip protocols: consulting immigration counsel, securing embassy guidance, ensuring invitation letters and documentation are flawless, and setting conservative arrival timelines for potential screening delays. Some have drafted contingency plans for remote participation if key staff are denied entry at the border [16].

A Conference Reckoning

As the doors open today at Moscone Center, GDC 2026 will proceed. Talks will be given, awards handed out, deals struck over coffee. For those inside the building, the week may feel much like any other year.

But in studios across Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, and beyond, developers who would normally be in San Francisco this week are instead attending virtually—or not at all. Their absence is a quiet indictment of the political moment, and a warning sign for an industry that thrives on openness and global collaboration.

The question facing the U.S. gaming industry is no longer whether international developers are pulling back. The GDC's own survey has answered that definitively. The question is whether the damage to America's position as the world's gaming capital is temporary—or whether the global industry is learning, conference by conference, that it can get along just fine without San Francisco.

As one developer put it: "The US needs to ask itself whether it wants to be the center of the games industry, or whether it's content to watch that center move elsewhere" [5].

GDC 2026 runs March 9-13, 2026 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony takes place Thursday, March 12 at 6:30 PM PT.