Blizzard Entertainment announced on Wednesday that its annual BlizzCon convention will be canceled this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This will be the second year in a row that the in-person event will not take place as Blizzard canceled the 2020 event exactly a year ago today. The convention was replaced with BlizzConline, a two-day livestream of developer panels and community showcases, which took place last February.
“Building an in-person BlizzCon is an epic and complex affair that takes many months of preparation—not just for us, but also for the many talented production partners, esports pros, hosts, entertainers, artists, and other collaborators we team up with locally and globally to put all of the pieces together,” said Saralyn Smith, executive producer of BlizzCon in the announcement post. “The ongoing complexities and uncertainties of the pandemic have impacted our ability to properly move forward on many of these fronts, and ultimately we’re now past the point where we’d be able to develop the kind of event we’d want to create for you in November.”
The 2021 convention will be replaced with a “global event” in early 2022 that will combine an online show with “smaller in-person gatherings” similar to the BlizConline event.
