Game Conferences Are Essential for Developers. But for Non-U.S. Citizens, There’s Fear
Anyone who works in the video game industry is familiar with the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California. Held in the Moscone Center every year since 2004 (and in San Jose before that), GDC, as it’s commonly known, brings thousands of game developers, community managers, marketing mavens, voice actors, music makers, and journalists together under one sprawling roof.
But this year, unsettling news about the mistreatment of foreign-born citizens and travelers stirred fear, including stories of the German national with a green card who is still being held at an ICE detention center, the Canadian woman who said she felt like she was ‘kidnapped’ when she was detained by the Immigration Enforcement Agency, and the French scientist denied entry for having “phone messages critical of Trump.” In the shadow of an increasingly xenophobic and anti-immigration Trump presidency, foreign-based GDC attendees expressed concerns about traveling to the U.S., while several Canadian developers decided to cancel their GDC trips outright.
Despite their fears, many developers decided to take their chances with American immigration and head to GDC, which ran from March 17 to 21. For them, the convention was a crucial opportunity to get a leg up in a struggling industry, which, after a pandemic-induced boom led to massive profits, has seen record layoffs in the last two years.
At the time of publishing, most of them have gotten back home safely, and after a week of meeting their peers face-to-face (many for the first time), attending panels, and pitching games, it’s possible that the rewards currently outweigh the risks. Yet, looking ahead, attendees for events like GDC will increasingly gamble with their safety as the Trump administration remains determined to gut immigration rights.
Rolling Stone spoke with numerous foreign game developers about their growing anxieties about traveling to the U.S. for events like GDC, what challenges they faced, and how Trump’s crackdown on immigration could have wide-ranging impacts on the gaming industry
The anxiety of traveling to the States
Dutch-Egyptian developer Rami Ismail says in the weeks leading up to GDC, an openly pro-Palestinian developer living outside the United States reached out to him to express that they were “more and more uncomfortable about going” to the event.
Ismail has long been an outspoken member of the gaming industry, criticizing the way the Middle East is portrayed in war games and deriding GDC’s exorbitant costs for foreign-born devs.
So he offered to help the concerned developer, requesting that he give him details about his trip (flight information, hotel name, emergency contact numbers) so that he could “help coordinate if something goes wrong.’”
Ismail, who says he has a “history of getting random checks” at airports, has become well-versed in U.S. immigration laws over the years. “Even before Trump, your recourse if you get grabbed at the border is effectively none,” he explains. “You don’t have your legal rights yet because you’re not in the country yet. So there are no lawyers, no phone calls. You just disappear into the system until you get spit out on the other side. Hopefully.”
Ismail’s offer to help one developer soon turned into a spreadsheet of dozens of foreign industry members. “That developer told other developers and the conversation happened more and more, and as people started getting detained at the border,” broadly referencing foreigners being detained, not those attending GDC specifically, “it became clear that there really is no safety in the United States.”
As of publishing, no GDC attendees were confirmed to have been detained.
While the foreign attendees were almost universally worried, GDC insists that they were doing everything they could to keep them secure. “The safety of all our attendees is the number one priority for the GDC team,” a representative tells Rolling Stone. “To that end, the GDC works closely with the city of San Francisco to foster a safe and positive experience, and this year we’ve stepped up the visibility of our safety programs with clear signage throughout the registration area,” and are offering a 24/7 Safety Hotline and security escorts by request.
GDC also provided a letter that attendees could include in their visa application and customs paperwork, but the event’s support systems can only go so far. Many still expressed anxiety about making the journey stateside, with Moon saying there’s “a general sentiment of fear” amongst visiting devs at GDC.
“I cried many times before coming, afraid of not being able to go back home,” Moon continues. “Each news story of another foreigner being detained at the border for months would shatter my heart and bring me down again to that place of severe anxiety.”
For Moon, who is an immigrant living in the United Kingdom, international travel has always been a harrowing experience. “Every time I go back to the U.K., I’m stopped at the border for at least an hour so they can they go over my visa information. It’s demoralizing every time, as I already have a residency visa. I’m already allowed to live there.”
Game developer Sherveen Uduwana, who was born in Sri Lanka but has a U.S. Green Card, recognized he was flying into San Francisco from a place of privilege: inside the United States. Yet he was still worried.
“I was reaching out to my parents and friends like, ‘Hey, I’m getting on a flight, text you when I land,’” Uduwana tells Rolling Stone. “You’re just more aware of that when you’re an immigrant, especially if you’re from the Global South, and sometimes you’ve seen firsthand what an unstable situation in a country looks like, and you know how quickly that can happen.”
The importance of GDC
For many up-and-coming developers, GDC is a must-attend event, far more important career-wise than more consumer-forward events like PAX, DICE, or GamesCom. There are hundreds of panels, talks, and networking opportunities throughout the week-long event, culminating in the Game Developers Choice Awards. Parties and hands-on opportunities take place both on and off the Moscone Center campus, with more than 30,000 people taking part in the festivities each year.
He decided not to attend GDC this year, telling Rolling Stone that he “doesn’t benefit from GDC as much as GDC benefits from me.” But he understands how important the conference is for up-and-coming industry folks.
“For them, going to GDC is very exciting, or at least an important part of continuing to be able to be a game developer professionally,” he says.
Attending GDC is a notoriously expensive endeavor — an All-Access Pass (which includes entry to the expo, a ticket to the awards ceremony, priority seating, and more) will run you $2,300, while an expo-only pass can cost up to $450. San Francisco is a pricey city to visit, with hotel prices skyrocketing during the week of GDC, and the city’s infamously high cost of living hits devs hard.
For many who had already planned their GDC trip before Donald Trump was elected, canceling was not a viable option — not just because of the financial hit they’d take but because of the professional one, too.
Many indie developers head to GDC looking for important connections with big-name industry folks and, even more importantly, funding to either work on a game, publish a title, or keep the studio’s lights on.
Indie developer Tanat Boozayaangool is from Thailand, and though he’s very familiar with U.S. travel (he studied here and has attended GDC four other times), he tells Rolling Stone he only came this year because it was the first time he’d been invited to be on a panel.
“The main reason I felt I couldn’t say no is because I’m a speaker,” says Boozayaangool, who is working on his first solo game. “It just feels like something you worked hard towards for the longest time. Maybe I don’t want to fully do the risk evaluation of like, ‘What will I do if I get detained?’”
Javiera Sepulveda, a Chilean-born quality assurance tester who works at Kolibri Games in Germany, said she was “more scared this time” than any of the four other times she’s attended GDC. But this year, she was invited to speak at a panel hosted by industry legend Brenda Romero, and she felt like she couldn’t turn down the opportunity.
“It’s a very important panel,” she tells Rolling Stone. “I was like ‘Okay, I’ll do it anyway,’ but I really thought about canceling it after the election.” Sepulveda says she saw “less diversity of countries” represented in the GDC attendees this year and felt like the panel, which featured women and non-binary folks, was more important than ever. (GDC did not immediately respond to a request for statistics on its attendees’ country of origin.)
For Nana Moon, the CEO of indie studio Moonana Games, who resides in England but is from Brazil, attending GDC was an absolute must, despite the risks. “My company was going bankrupt last year, and we’re still going through the roughest patch of our game dev careers,” she says via Discord. “Coming to GDC is pivotal for me to create lasting connections with important people that may bring my company further when it needs it most.”
A Dubai-based developer, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from immigration officials, told Rolling Stone that the lack of video game jobs outside of the U.S. meant that attending GDC was imperative. And the all-access pass provided by Xbox helped justify his trip.
“I didn’t want to waste it,” he says. “I’m looking for work, too, and finding work as someone outside of the U.S. is hard. I wanted to make it a possibility because I’ve heard from a lot of people that having a face to put to the name goes a long way.”
Journalist Jon Clarke admits that his status as a white English man made going through immigration “relatively painless,” but also notes that GDC’s location should be reconsidered (an idea Ismail also holds). “For an industry that is massively struggling, spending this kind of money and trying to get groups of people together in one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. feels like something that could be rethought out a bit,” he says.
Risk vs. Reward
Though there has yet to be any news of game developers being held at the border or otherwise hassled by ICE officials, the anxiety around traveling to the U.S. isn’t unfounded. Several European countries, as well as Canada, have recently issued advisories regarding travel to the U.S, revising their guidelines to hopefully help their citizens avoid detention at the border.
And though many who traveled to GDC this year were plagued with anxiety, as the first major video game convention held after Trump’s January inauguration, it went smoother than expected for most.
“Right before I flew in I watched the second season of the Netflix show The Mole, and they show a detention center, and that terrified me a bit,” a Dubai-based developer who wished to remain anonymous admits. “But for me, [immigration] was smooth, quick, less than a minute.” Days later, he tells Rolling Stone he “got home safely without any real fuss.”
Safely back in the U.K., Moon tells Rolling Stone she faced the expected barrage of questions at the border, which was “annoying” as it delayed her by over 30 minutes, but “other than that, leaving the U.S. was quite pleasant.”
“Maybe they were glad to see me leaving when I said I would,” Moon jokes.
For Moon, meeting fellow women of color in the industry and acting as a beacon of hope for her struggling studio made the trip invaluable. “The connections and friends I’ve made here make any odd encounter worth it, and it definitely makes the hassle and anxiety of going through the border worth it,” she says.
Meeting people face-to-face after years of digital-only interaction was well worth the trip for the anonymous Dubai dev. “I’m alone in Dubai, so seeing people and being in this company is magic,” he says. “It’s like, ‘Oh my God, human company is incredible. Why am I isolating myself?’”
Boozayaangool emphasizes the importance of representation at GDC, pointing out that there is only one other dev at the conference who visited from Thailand, but she’s a U.S. citizen. “There’s not a very big Thai presence in the global game scene,” he explains. “It feels there’s a part of time that, being visible at GDC, it affects more than just me.”
