Games Done Quick team organizes speedrun events every year at certain times, most known ones being the Summer Games Done Quick and the Awesome Games Done Quick, latter being the winter counterpart for the former. In 2023 January, they are coming back for another great speedrun event and raise money for charities, but there seems to be an issue.
The event was originally planned to be held in Florida, and agreements with many parties were already in place. Unfortunately, after the event in July which was the first in-person event since COVID-19 pandemic, they announced that they are going back to online format. Reason being is that Florida’s laws about both COVID-19 and anti-LGBTQ+ attitude are making it increasingly unsafe for the community to attend.
At first it is easy to think “well, then just do it somewhere else”, but the agreements also incur heavy cancellation fees which are obviously not easy to handle. Therefore the most viable option to work around this issue is going back to online format and minimizing the in-person presence in the venue. GDQ team has a strong support towards marginalized communities, so Florida turned out to be a bad choice for the event.
