Facebook Cancels All Large Events Until 2021 Including Oculus Connect

As part of an update on Facebook’s COVID-19 pandemic response stating that the “vast majority” of Facebook employees would work from home for at least another month, the company has also announced that is calling off any physical events with more than 50 people through June 2021. 

The announcement came from CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and the cancelation includes the Oculus Connect 7 virtual reality conference which will be replaced by an online-only event instead of actually taking place in San Jose.

“We will require the vast majority of our employees to work from home through at least the end of May in order to create a safer environment both for our employees doing critical jobs who must be in the office and for everyone else in our local communities,” said Zuckerberg. Some employees, including moderators who cover terrorism and self-harm-related content, can’t work remotely. But “overall, we don’t expect to have everyone back in our offices for some time.”

The company’s main F8 conference which is normally happening in the spring won’t probably happen either.

The silver lining about this is that Facebook will donate $500,000 to the city of San Jose to make up for the loss in revenue from Oculus Connect 7.