Today Games Done Quick announced the next incarnation of their popular charity marathon stream will NOT be held in a ballroom, but take place entirely online from the speedrunners’ homes. If you’ve been paying attention, you know GDQ has been mostly held this way since the summer of 2020 and the start of the pandemic. It was only THIS year that the event switched back to its traditional live ballroom location.
So why go back? Are they worried about a new severe COVID wave? Or were they hit with budget cuts and switched to an online event for that reason? Neither of those. The reason AGDQ 2023 will not be held in-person this time is because they booked the live event in Florida and can’t get out of it any other way.
A significant portion of the speedrunning community happens to be LGBTQ, and many of the runners that have been featured repeatedly on GDQ are trans. Florida, as of late, has been increasingly unfriendly to that portion of the human population. Also, there IS a bit of...
