Indie game developer Vivid Foundry, like many other small studios, has been struggling to stay afloat. Its debut title, Solace State, did not make the commercial splash the team had hoped for when it launched in 2023. The studio has been barely making ends meet as of late and is searching for clients and freelance gigs to keep itself afloat. For Toronto-based director and producer Tanya Kan, a huge part of that effort is a visit to the annual Game Developers Conference held each March in San Francisco.
Or it was, until Kan and her partner Gary Kings, a game trailer maker, canceled their trip on March 12, mere days before they planned to leave. Kan and Kings, like some other international developers, no longer felt safe traveling to the United States. “We came to the conclusion that the risk of something happening to us is still relatively low, but it’s too big to ignore, especially for a games conference,” Kings says.
Every year, several key gaming events take place in the US, including DICE, PAX West and PAX East, Summer Games Fest, and GDC; it was also the home of the now defunct E3. Although each event is different, they are often a place for developers to connect with peers, pitch platforms and publishers, work on professional development, and show off their work. In the days leading up to GDC, however, Trump’s comments about annexation and Canada as a “51st state,” as well as calling its border “an artificial line” drawn on a map; rising tensions amid tariff trade wars; and news reports of detainments at the American borders are increasingly making some developers nervous.
On LinkedIn, Hinterland founder Raphael van Lierop urged Canadian developers and colleagues to reconsider their GDC attendance. “You can no longer expect to travel to the US and return safely,” van Lierop posted. “Things are getting intense and they are going to get worse before they get better. Do not put yourself in a position where you are unable to get back into Canada, or where your Canadian citizenship is used against you.”
Van Lierop’s post had been divisive among developers, drawing criticism from some who call it fear-mongering. Others, however, feel there are good reasons to be concerned about traveling to the United States. In the two months since his inauguration, President Donald Trump has rapidly changed US policies, leading to decreased safety around flights, passport confiscation at US borders, and mounting tensions between the US and Canada.
Earlier this month, a Palestinian graduate student at Columbia University was arrested and detained for his involvement in pro-Palestine protests last year; the current administration now seeks to revoke the student’s green card and deport him. Van Lierop highlighted this concern in his post as well, for anyone who has “been supportive of any causes or expressed any values that run contrary to the tastes of the current administration in the US.”
Van Lierop tells WIRED that his post is not a knock against GDC as an event, but rather the current conference that is bringing international developers into US borders. “I’m not saying you’re foolish to go down there,” he says. “It’s just—if you’re going to go down to the States, just think about what that means, take precautions if you need to. Just be aware that this is a very dynamic situation right now. I hate to say it, but Trump is completely unpredictable.”
Van Lierop points to Trump’s comments about Canadian annexation; his calls to “take back” the Panama Canal and plans to increase military presence in Panama; and annexation comments about Greenland. “What I want people to take away from that post is an understanding of how completely unpredictable things feel right now for us as Canadians.”
“If you’re Canadian, you feel really under attack right now,” van Lierop says.
Identity Crisis
GDC is considered an important show for developers, especially for those early in their career and looking to network. It does not carry the prestige of executive-heavy events like DICE, nor the consumer-focused role of PAX, but instead is sort of a middle ground, complete with its own annual awards show.
Conferences like GDC are also notoriously pricey. An all-access pass at its regular rate goes for $2,299; individual expo passes, which offer a limited experience, are $349. That does not account for the cost of flights, hotels, food, or other aspects of travel in an expensive city like San Francisco. A GDC trip for even a single developer can easily cost thousands of dollars; pulling out of such a trip, and potentially losing that money, is not a decision they take lightly.
For Kan, who is forfeiting a scholarship that allowed her to attend the event, the trip she had planned “was trying to hit a lot of different moving targets effectively just so that my studio can stay afloat.” Attending the show under current circumstances would involve more than just safely crossing the border, but keeping an eye on updates on US-Canada relations. It would overshadow the entire experience, she says.
“Do we want to put ourselves through that kind of psychological concern?” she says of her and her partner. “Do we want to put ourselves through constantly checking our phones every moment that we’re at GDC, the possibility of something unknown and unprecedented happening? That will of course detract so much away from our attention. GDC’s already complicated as a conference and something which requires basically our hundred and fifty percent energy and focus.”
Another international developer, Freya Holmér, tells WIRED that although she’s been to GDC several times before, she’s canceled her plans for this year’s event, which included giving a talk on math concepts and how they can be applied to games. GDC has been a great place for her to meet people, she says, adding “all of a sudden you might’ve just made a new connection that changes the trajectory of your company or project for the better.”
But the Sweden-based developer is concerned about the political direction the US has taken. “It’s clear to me that the United States is rapidly heading in a fascist direction due to a party that has completely detached from reality,” Holmér says.
The final straw, she says, was the administration’s erasure of LGBTQ+ identities. “They just want to get rid of people like me … going through airports is stressful enough as it is as an LGBT person, but with all this, it’s even worse. Even if we disregard the airport, just being in a country where, somehow, half of the electorate is signing off on what Trump is doing, is legitimately scary.”
Look Elsewhere
The United States has long acted as a hub for gaming, but it may not remain one if international developers don’t want to do business in Trump’s America. WIRED previously reported that trans and gender-nonconforming developers both domestically and abroad were already concerned about their ability to work safely in the industry. Those concerns are spreading.
“With the way the United States is going right now, I don’t think it’s possible to invite international guests [there] and have them feel safe, especially those of minority groups like myself,” Holmér says. “I’d love to see the epicenter of game development move out of the US, at least during these times.”
WIRED reached out to GDC organizers to ask if they had received requests for refunds or heard from developers who felt they could not safely travel to the US. “GDC 2025 is on pace to deliver another strong event, with overall attendance tracking in line with previous years, expo registrations up [year-over-year], and steady enthusiasm from attendees who have registered or are actively planning their time at the event,” spokesperson Brian Rubin-Sowers says.
Van Lierop says to weather this moment, the game industry needs to look beyond the US. “I think for our own survival as an industry group, we need to be more internationally minded,” he says. “We need to understand more about how to make games for a global audience. And we can’t really afford to be so North American–centric.”
Hinterland, van Lierop says, will not be traveling to the States anytime soon in any official capacity. Van Lierop says that while he won’t be telling team members what to do, he doesn’t feel that it’s safe or responsible to travel into the US to do business. “Not everybody on my team is a white male, and I’m responsible for all of them,” he says. “I don’t think we can feel confident that someone who’s gay or has expressed certain political beliefs in their social media even could confidently travel down to the US right now and feel like they would make it back over the border without potentially some issues.”
Reasonable people, van Lierop says, “can’t rely on the expectation that things are going to function as they have for the last hundred years, that things are just normal … that people will behave motivated by common sense and logic and reason.”
