After careful consideration, Northern Arena has made the difficult decision to shift the production of the Canadian Game Awards for 2020 from a live presentation to a pre-recorded show that will be broadcast on the originally scheduled date: April 9, 2020 8:00pm EST on  GINX TV Canada.

The Canadian Game Awards is designed to unite Canada’s gaming communities in celebration of its achievements. In a country as large as Canada, one of the challenges for such an event is bringing people from all corners of the country in one place to celebrate together. Adding to that challenge this year is the growing concern of travelling at a time when the world is closely monitoring the development of the COVID-19 outbreak. We understand that during these uncertain times, many fans and prominent guests may be uncomfortable travelling. 

We have been and continue to monitor COVID-19 developments and guidelines from the Government of Canada, the World Health Organization (WHO) and local public health agencies. While we recognize that the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) has assessed the public health risk associated with COVID-19 as low for Canada at this time, we wish to respect the decision of our guests to travel within their levels of comfort and safety. For this reason, we have made the decision to shift the show to a pre-recorded format, which is not dependent on participants travelling.

All ticket holders for the Canadian Game Awards will receive a complete refund for their purchase in the coming days.

We sincerely apologize to anyone who was looking forward to joining us at a live celebration. Rest assured that this change for the first edition of the event does not reflect our intent for the upcoming years. Our vision remains to continue producing the Canadian Game Awards in a live format, where the gaming community and the fans can gather and celebrate together. Furthermore, this decision does not affect or change the programming for our partners running the XP Game Developer Summit.

Please stay in touch with us via our website and social media channels for updates regarding the show.