E3 2020 Promises New Experiences and Better Security to “Earn Back Your Trust”

The Entertainment Software Association issued a two-part update on E3 2020 on Thursday to address two topics: New experiences planned to make the event worth attending and an improved security and privacy process to protect the information of those who attend. Plans to “shake things up” are in motion in the months leading up to E3 2020, though, the ESA isn’t sharing specifics on those efforts just yet. The E3 website has also been rebuilt with new security measures in an effort to earn back the trust of those who had their personal information leaked by the organization last year.

A tweet from the official E3 account and a post on the ESA’s site that gave a sneak peek into next year marked the first public communications we’ve seen in a while amid E3’s offseason. The post acknowledged the need for more experiences at the event and said the ESA is “not producing E3 2020 in a vacuum.” The organization has partnered with iam8bit to help make these new experiences a reality. Opportunities to play and celebrate games, guest appearances, and “experiential zones that delight the senses” were teased without specifics on what we’d see, but more details should be revealed over the next few weeks during the buildup to E3 2020.

The big leak of personal information from registered media members that occurred last year was also a significant point of discussion in the post. It was discovered in August 2019 that the ESA apparently had stored information like names, addresses, and phone numbers belonging to media attendees in spreadsheets on the organization’s E3 site. That information was discovered and made public after being shared online which effectively doxed around 2,000 journalists, YouTubers, and other registered content creators.

The ESA addressed this matter in the post by saying media registration process has been updgraded after it “received a lot of attention this past summer. Earning back the trust of attendees is the group’s “top priority” which led to other privacy changes.

“That’s why we rebuilt the E3 website with enhanced and layered security measures developed by an outside cybersecurity firm,” the post continued. “This included updating our data management processes, including the handling of personally identifiable information, and we will no longer store that data on our site. We have also changed our registration practices and will collect the minimum information necessary to complete your registration.”

E3 2020 registration begins on February 15th for the event which will take place from June 9th to June 11th.