The 2025 Game Developers Conference has come to a close after hosting nearly 30,000 registered attendees across five full days of inspiring sessions and networking opportunities with peers and leaders across the games industry. GDC also introduced the first annual GDC Nights after-hours event, with two evenings of engaging community content that blended TV, movies, comedy, games, and fun activities to further underline GDC’s commitment to bringing the world together through games.
“Seeing the engrossing lectures, the collective labor organizing, and the amazing performances from Austin Wintory alongside the artists at GDC Nights has been an affirming experience and helps reinforce the value of GDC’s mission to connect developers through their shared passion for game development,” said Stephenie Hawkins, GDC Event Director. “The past few years have seen increasing challenges for game developers the world over, but we’re proud to see GDC continue to serve as a beacon. We look forward to seeing our friends here again, and hope that the connections and insights they gained will carry through to their next amazing game projects.”
During the inaugural GDC Nights program, which ran on Monday, March 17 and Thursday, March 20, the 6,000 attendees participated in a slate of activities that included a screening and roundtable featuring the stars of Hulu’s Deli Boys, a screening of the deeply emotional and affirming Netflix documentary, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, and a live comedy show taking place in the world of Animal Crossing hosted by comedian Jenny Yang.
GDC 2025 hosted 1,000+ speakers across 750 sessions, workshops and roundtable discussions, in addition to a plethora of networking opportunities. GDC featured developers, exhibitors and attendees from over the globe with 400 top game industry teams including Meta, Tencent Games, Snail Games, and Servers.com, exhibiting their latest products, services and innovations.
It was also a space for attendees to play and connect with the developers behind new and exciting independent games, including the finalists from the Independent Games Festival (IGF) in the IGF Pavilion and the alt.ctrl.GDC exhibit that is home to games that use alternative controllers including a seesaw, a cat’s furry behind and a broken shower.
GDC featured workshops and sessions led by some of the biggest names in the games and entertainment industry. Esteemed developers shared their insights into the creations of hit games including Astro Bot, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Like a Dragon, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Split Fiction, Helldivers 2, Silent Hill 2, Monument Valley 3, Tekken 8 and many more. During GDC, there were several major announcements and reveals, including the formation of the first North American industry-wide union of video game workers, the United Videogame Workers-CWA Local 9433. Qualcomm made waves with the reveal of their Pocket S2, a new Android-based handheld gaming device that will be powered by the Snapdragon G3 Gen 3 chipset, and Roblox announced the launch of its new open-source model called Cube.
The GDC Main Stage featured a pair of presentations that helped celebrate games and bring the joy of the art to even more people around the world. On Wednesday, composer Austin Wintory (Stray Gods, Journey, Banner Saga series) conducted a new musical performance known as “GDC Main Stage: A Developer’s Concert” following the success of the performance’s debut during GDC 2024. The hour-long concert was performed by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and featured lush orchestrations that spanned decades of beloved game scores including works by Wilbert Roget, II, Darren Korb, and others. On Thursday, the GDC Main Stage hosted the unveiling of ESA’s landmark Accessible Games Initiative, a cross-industry effort to provide consumers with clear information about the accessibility features available in video games. The initiative is fully supported by founding members Electronic Arts, Google, Microsoft, Nintendo of America, and Ubisoft.
GDC 2025 honored the top developers of the past year with the 27th annual Independent Games Festival Awards and the 25th annual Game Developers Choice Awards. At the IGF Awards on Wednesday, independent game Consume Me won the Seumas McNally Grand, the WINGS Award, and the Nuovo Award, which honors experiences that make both players and the awards jurors think differently about gaming as a medium. At the Game Developers Choice Awards, Balatro was named Game of the Year, as well as receiving Best Debut, Best Design, and the Innovation Award. Astro Bot, developed by PlayStation Studios Team ASOBI and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, also claimed high honors at the show, winning Best Audio and Best Technology.
Building off of its introduction in 2024, GDC continued to expand upon its Travel Together program to help attendees form networking walking groups between multiple hotel locations throughout San Francisco and the Moscone Center; a 24-hour GDC Safety phone line (+1 925-852-4361) that is available 24/7 throughout the event; the Game History Gallery that showcased games from marginalized developers as well as tips on how to preserve games. GDC also continued multiple programs to expand access to GDC content, including the Equal Opportunity Attendance Program, which offers 1,000 complimentary GDC Expo passes to applicants who were otherwise unable to attend without considerable financial assistance. This year, 700+ passes were donated through the GDC scholarships program, made in partnership with more than 25+ organizations dedicated to supporting and uplifting underrepresented voices in the industry.
In addition, GDC provided all IGF finalists travel stipends to ensure they could attend and participate in the conference. GDC celebrated finalists with the annual IGF Pavilion with a kiosk and equipment to highlight their games to the public at no cost and IGF Award winners receive prize money for their incredible work.
Other support resources included affordable onsite childcare services, an ADA-accessible kiosk at the IGF Pavilion, accessible controllers at alt.ctrl.GDC, and reserved seating at all sessions for those with visual or auditory impairments. To increase access to GDC beyond the conference halls, GDC partnered with a diverse group of co-streamers to broadcast key programming, including the “GDC Main Stage: A Developer’s Concert,” the IGF Awards and the Game Developers Choice Awards, live on Twitch and YouTube to global audiences. These co-streamers included IGN, PlanoPlaysGames, JoeyPrink, Ekate (Spanish), lyksaber (English & Tagalog) and others. Across GDC’s Twitch channel and co-streamers, there were more than 3,000 unique live streams of the awards and concert. Additionally, GDC posts a selection of sessions to its video archive, GDC Vault, available at no cost to the game developer community every year. All sessions added to GDC Vault include closed captions in English, Spanish, Mandarin and Japanese.
To ensure an inclusive environment, all GDC attendees were required to abide by GDC’s strict Code of Conduct, which was heavily promoted throughout Moscone. It states that GDC will not tolerate any unacceptable behaviors including intimidating, harassing, abusive, discriminatory, derogatory or demeaning conduct by any attendees of GDC and related events, and that these behaviors could result in expulsion from the event.
GDC will return to the Moscone Center next year, Monday, March 9 to Friday, March 13, 2026. The call for submissions for GDC 2026 will open in early July 2025.
For more details on the Game Developers Conference, please visit the GDC’s official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, X or BlueSky. Official photos are available via the Official GDC Flickr account.
