because big companies are slow as crap on some fronts, moving way to fast on others, and change their minds twenty times before circling back around to their first choices. Sometimes we cannot put events into the system because they haven't announced "X" yet so we have to drag our feet on purpose to not violate our NDA's or piss off marketing. Sometimes we have out entire schedule put together then Gen Con tells us "Oh ya nothing is allowed to start until after Noon on Thursday" - which happened last year and totally borked my entire schedule. 

The main driver is everybody wants the newest, coolest, and cannot find it anywhere else things to play/do at Gen Con. Which means everybody is pushing the very edge of what is possible in timing and with that comes problems. 

If you want me to put my schedule in 6 months early and promise on the life of one of my offspring it is set in stone and will not change then I can do that. You'll get things that have been out for 4-5 months and I have in my hand right now. Then peeps will whine why other shows around Gen Con seem to have all this cool new stuff and Gen Con does not. Well you wanted me to guarantee a schedule - you get what ya get.

Again I don’t understand for large events like Magic, Pathfinder Society, and other long standing events at Gen Con why the companies running these can’t have everything together ahead of time. 

What’s the point in having a deadline for the events catalog if they will allow companies to ignore the deadline and turn in events whenever they want?

The company that runs Magic events is always late in submitting their events which caused issues such as what I am experiencing for many people every year. 

Gen Con should simply enforce the due date for event submissions for these large companies that are always at Gen Con running events as there really aren’t any grand mysteries regarding the events they will be running. 

it is less than one month from the start of the con and there is no reason why anyone should still be waiting for events to be posted to the event listing. 

And if they don't make the deadline, their events don't happen?  So no Magic at Gen Con.  That won't affect attendance at all.

The larger a company is, the less it cares about Gen Con, and the more concessions Gen Con has to make to convince it to attend. If they banned every EO that is repeatedly late, there would be a lot of events missing and then fewer players would attend. So there's not much Gen Con can do to punish them.

Especially if the events sell out anyway. If you want Pastimes to be on time next year, maybe don't jump through hoops to attend their events.

As for events that have been submitted and not processed yet, remember that the Gen Con Online catalog came out last week. Presumably the limited staff gave that priority over any super-late Indy submissions or somewhat-late-and-needs-correction submissions. I'm not sure Gen Con was even able to hire the temporary staff they usually do for this.

Yeah what you are asking for is actually "have fewer events," not "have everyone submit their events on time."  Neither threats nor treats are going to get companies who know their events will sell out no matter how late they announce them to bother putting them together sooner.

They are not asking for fewer events they are asking for accountability. GenCon has allowed this happen by not enforcing their own rules, so really there are no rules.

A company of any size has absolutely no need to respect the wishes of gencon if they can just do what ever they want without consequences.

Accountability would be great, but how do you actually do that in a way that affects the tardy EO's but doesn't affect Gen Con attendees?

Seems to me the event team is between a rock and a hard place on this. 

Gencon isn't a show, it's a convention. It's grown from being an entirely "for fun" and "fan run" event, but it's still based on that model. If you want more events and submitted before the deadline, step up and submit some events before the deadline. A fully professional show would still have deadline issues, every workplace does, but would be more on-time and customer driven and all that, but it would also be hugely more expensive. 

 That said, I don't understand the notable big companies that are coming to Gencon to support their big products that don't have a full schedule set up in advance. That's not a fan trying to figure out if they will attend or if they will have time to put together an event. Marketing is a big deal and that's what this is. Gencon gives them a huge audience with a lot of interest in their product, and they can't be bothered to participate effectively. 

This seems to come up every couple years, usually from the same folks, so allow me to reiterate again what we said last time.

• Gen Con will not be instituting a new policy that does not accept late events. The only result of that would be an even more over-worked Events team, fewer events for everyone, and/or more complaints about how game X or company Y aren't in attendance.
  
• Our policies are clearly stated and enforced - the event submission deadline is explicitly called out as cut-off for when we guarantee an event will be included in the initial event release (assuming there are not other issues with it). At no point is it labeled as a cut-off after which additional events will not be accepted.
  
• If you really want a strict deadline, you can already enforce that yourself without affecting anyone else's work or enjoyment: simply do not look at events added after the initial schedule release and you have created the exact conditions you are calling for.
  
• If late events are a significant concern of yours, reach out to the companies and groups whose events are late and let them know (in a respectful and encouraging manner, not an accusatory or rude one) how important it is to you that their events are included in the initial schedule release.
  

Hopefully that makes it clear and we do not have to revisit this again down the road.

-
Derek Guder
Director of Events
Gen Con LLC

I will then simply ask this. 
Pastimed announced a Gen Con championship series for the Magic events they are hosting. They announced this a while ago, but it took them a while to get the go ahead from Wizards of the Coast. They have the events listed and have stated that they sent them to Gen Con to be posted. 

When will these events be listed in the event listing for Gen Con Indy?

If we did not accept late events at all, those events would never go active. And if you're concern is that you will need to visit Customer Service onsite to return your ticket to register for them, you won't be able to sign up if they were live now, either.

There are a lot of different deadlines and processes involved in planning Gen Con, and the realities of that means that sometimes late events are quickly reviewed and activated but other times we have to work through another pressing deadline before we can turn to them.

-
Derek Guder
Director of Events
Gen Con LLC

As a long time EO we post our events early in the timeline to make sure we have a room and make it into the catalogue because we know if we wait our events may not be able to be scheduled at our preferred days and times. That's for a well established, resourced and dependable staff that runs small events that can many times be covered if someone else can't make it. That said we've had to cancel games. Gen Con has always worked with me as an EO to ensure my events are scheduled. I only schedule games with staff that commit on time. Other groups don't have the same luxury as the www.muskulls.org do, they might actually intend to make some money at the convention.

This year due to the change in event timing and COVID we're doing what some groups are doing; running with late scheduling, and in our case running outside the convention scheduling altogether. Please keep in mind every EO is doing the best with what volunteer staff they have in a chaotic time. I have always felt that Gen Con is very much doing the same and have always made a keen effort to make a game happen rather than not schedule it.