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Gaming’s biggest controversies of 2020

By Elliott Gatica

LOS ANGELES, CA - JUNE 10: A Playstation 4 controller is displayed at the Sony Playstation E3 2013 press conference June 10, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. Thousands are expected to attend the annual three-day convention to see the latest games and announcements from the gaming industry.(Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES, CA - JUNE 10: A Playstation 4 controller is displayed at the Sony Playstation E3 2013 press conference June 10, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. Thousands are expected to attend the annual three-day convention to see the latest games and announcements from the gaming industry.(Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images) /
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E3 2020 - coronavirus - The World's Premier Event for Video Games – West Hall – Day 3
Stanley Pierre-Louis speaks onstage during E3 2019 at the Los Angeles Convention center on June 13, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for E3/Entertainment Software Association) /

E3 2020 was cancelled

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, big name companies were not going to be returning to the Electronic Entertainment Expo for 2020. These names included Nintendo, Activision, EA, and more notably, Sony. Sony’s absence in the year they were to release new hardware was very questionable. In short, their vision for their lineup of new games and hardware did not fit what E3 and the ESA had in store.

It didn’t help that in E3 2019, many important attendees like journalists and influencers had sensitive information about them leaked. But on top of that, one of the more prominent faces of the event, Geoff Keighley, opted out from hosting the E3 Coliseum. It was shocking to some, but the vision of the event was already murky. It became more of a glorified, celebrity-exclusive looking event with video games sprinkled in rather than the time to really celebrate games and see upcoming titles.

Ultimately as the pandemic was ramping up, many big events in the Convention Center were being cancelled, namely Anime Expo which usually happens around the same time as E3 does too. It’s sad to see it slowly losing its luster and possibly being cancelled altogether, but the live online events that filled in those gaps really helped encapsulate the most of an E3 experience we can get, like the PlayStation State of Play streams, Inside Xbox, Nintendo Directs, and the newly debuted Summer Game Fest hosted by Geoff Keighley.

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