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Yesterday, ReedPOP announced that it was indefinitely canceling PAX South with no plans for when or if it will return. The organizers blamed a lack of growth and the ongoing covid-19 pandemic.
According to a statement from ReedPOP sent to previous PAX South attendees and later posted on the official PAX Twitter account, while other PAX events grew year after year, PAX South didn’t.
“When the first PAX was held in 2004, we expected at most a hundred locals to show up,” said ReedPOP and PAX organizers. “Never in our wildest dreams did we anticipate more than 3,000 passionate fans to arrive, or for our one-time event to turn into a series held in five cities around the world. While each of our other events has flourished, some of them drawing hundreds of thousands of attendees from around the world, PAX South hasn’t expanded and to some extent has remained the same show that it was when we opened it in 2015.”
As stated above, PAX South started in 2015, with the first event being held in San Antonio. The show was a smaller production, with ReedPOP’s official website describing the event as a “more indie drive and table top heavy show”. As a result, the event was always one of the smaller PAX shows, drawing fewer attendees and big publishers compared to older, more popular events like PAX East.
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As a result of the lack of growth and continuing issues caused by the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, ReedPOP made the “difficult decision” to end future PAX South events for the “foreseeable future.”
While the wording in the statement leaves open the possibility that PAX South could return, possibly in a different state or form, many smaller devs and fans are disappointed by the news. For a lot of folks, PAX South was a closer, cheaper alternative to the bigger gaming conventions and PAX events.
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