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GDC attendance hits record 22,500, up 17 percent

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 1 min

The annual Game Developers Conference broke records this year with more than 22,500 attendees, up 17 percent from a year ago.

That’s probably a sign of the times, as the overall game industry has expanded and, as a whole, has recovered from the economic doldrums of 2008-2009. The GDC attendance number is a bellwether for the industry’s overall economic health, which has been bolstered by the growth of mobile, social and online games even as the core console game industry shrinks.

The career hall seemed particularly busy. The expo floor had more than 300 exhibitors. Montreal-based Polytron took home the Seamus McNally grand prize for the Independent Games Festival for the game Fez. And Bethesda Game Studios won Game of the Year at the Game Developers Choice Awards for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Check out our compete coverage of the five-day event here.

Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.