The Game Developers Conference has announced GDC Summer, currently set for August 4-6 in San Francisco. The scaled-down event will feature “a new series of microtalks and fireside chats, as well as a dedicated space for comprehensive career development sessions.”

The Steam Game Festival: Spring Edition comes to Steam tomorrow through March 23, Geoff Keighley announced on Twitter today. It will feature demos and other highlights of over 40 games that were supposed to be shown at GDC. The event goes live at 1pm ET/10am PT.

Sony is backing out of this year’s Game Developers Conference due to concerns over the coronavirus. This comes a day after the company said it wouldn’t be attending PAX East because of the virus either. Facebook also announced it won’t at GDC 2020 for the same reason. 

Ladykiller in a Bind creator Christine Love gives a talk at GDC about sex as a reward in games. “The problem with ‘the chase’ is that it’s one-sided,” Love explained to a room of Sexy Microtalks attendees. Love instead suggests making sex a crucial and indispensible aspect of gameplay, not just a reward. When sex is…

Divinity Original Sin 2 had a disastrous production, according to director Swen Vincke, who said in a postmortem panel at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco that they didn’t finish the writing until months before the game came out. They even changed a chunk of Sebille’s origin story one week before…

Neo Cab is an upcoming narrative game about the ride-share gig economy in the far future where drivers compete with self-driving cars. The player must regulate protagonist Lena’s mood, displayed on her biofeed bracelet, while also balancing her Neo Cab driver rating—two things that might come in conflict when a…

Epic Games is livesteaming from the Game Developer’s Conference at 12:30pm Eastern. Watch the presentation on YouTube above, or on Twitch.

Are you at GDC in San Francisco this week? Maddy and I will be doing a Kotaku Splitscreen meet-n-greet in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel at 2pm on Wednesday, March 20. Come say hi, show us your games, and/or make an offer to buy us from Univision?

If you’re looking for something to scratch that Inside-ish puzzle platformer itch, Stela, out later this year for Xbox and PC, just might. We gave the moody indie game a spin today for its debut at GDC and, so far, it seems tricky and beautiful.