AGDQ 2023 moves online to protect against COVID-19 and anti-LGBTQ+ hate
On Thursday, Games Done Quick announced that AGDQ 2023 (Awesome Games Done Quick) will be an online event held from January 8-15. Though the event was originally planned to be in-person at a venue in Florida, the GDQ organizers decided to move things online to keep the community safe in light of the state’s COVID-19 and anti-LGBTQ+ policies.
“While we would love to return in-person, we’ve determined that to provide a safe and welcoming event to all it was best that we move away from our originally planned location in Florida,” GDQ wrote on Twitter. “Given the state’s continued disregard for COVID-19’s dangers (including anti-mandate policies) and an increased aggression towards LGBTQ+ individuals, including the law colloquially known as ‘Don’t Say Gay,’ we do not believe it is a safe place for our community.”
Games Done Quick is the organizer group behind a series of video game speedrunning events that raise money for various charities. Beyond the standard GDC marathons like AGDQ 2023, sub-groups also put on events, such as the Flame and Frost Fatales marathons which are organized by and geared towards women within the space.
According to the rest of the thread, GDQ originally secured the venue in Florida for their 2021 event. With the COVID-19 pandemic in full swing, however, they decided to postpone the Florida event until it “was safe to return.” Now that things are safer than they were in 2021, GDQ wanted to return to an in-person format for 2023, but Florida’s policies have left the organizers feeling it’s an unsafe place for their community. Though they’d still like to host a live event, the GDQ organizers stated their previous contract has made that too costly.
“We’ve explored multiple options which would allow us to remain in-person by relocating to a safer location,” GDQ wrote in the thread. “Unfortunately, the cost required to cancel our contract is too great to justify relocating AGDQ while paying the cancellation fee, and we are no longer able to delay our contract. This ultimately led us to move AGDQ 2023 online.”
While the organizers will be saving on some costs thanks to going online, they still lost money, according to the Twitter thread. The group is looking to recoup those costs however they can, including via Twitch subscriptions on the GDQ Twitch channel.
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