The competition, which brings together hundreds of people in their face-to-face celebrations, will not take place until last April. Official decision.
Activision Blizzard has reported that the Overwatch League is temporarily paralyzed for fear of the Wuhan coronavirus, already considered by the WHO as a pandemic. The North American company, in its desire to put the health of players, organizations and assistants to the events of the competition first, has suspended during the months of March and April all the planned meetings of the season after doing the same in China weeks ago.
The league has issued an official statement through its official website and Twitter social network where they anticipate having had to take these drastic measures to avoid, as far as possible, participating indirectly in the spread of a world-wide virus . The outbreak, far from having reached its peak of infected, thus also affects electronic sports competitions in the video game sector.
"We will continue to pay attention to COVID-19 (coronavirus), the recommendations of each city and the guidelines established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," they comment in the note. "After carefully analyzing and working closely with our teams, we canceled all Overwatch League events for March and April," they point out. In addition, they are already in contact with the teams participating in the Overwatch League with a view to holding upcoming matches cautiously and without logistical risk.
Countries like Italy have suspended air transport to prevent the outbreak from spreading to other countries in the world, since the Mediterranean country is one of the points with the highest volume of affected and, therefore, the greatest possibility of contagion.
E3 2020 has also been affected by these preventive measures and has been canceled. The United States is no stranger to the coronavirus and, as health agencies have recommended, all kinds of events where hundreds of people gather can become a nest of virus incubation and indirect spread of it. Stopping the growth curve is, right now, everyone's responsibility.
