Normally taking place in San Antonio, Texas each year after launching in 2015, PAX South has been canceled indefinitely, brought to an end by the PAX team after it fails to expand and see the same growth the other PAX events have. Based on that, and “compounded by the impact of COVID-19,” they made the decision to end PAX South “for the foreseeable future.”
We have made the difficult decision to bring PAX South to an end for the foreseeable future. See the full statement below: pic.twitter.com/hW8J6wBzxb
— PAX (@pax) October 29, 2021
You can read the full statement from PAX below:
When the first PAX was held in 2004, we expected at most a hundred locals to show up. 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.
Faced with that reality, and compounded by the impact of COVID-19, we have made the difficult decision to bring PAX South to and end for the foreseeable future.
The heart of PAX South lives in in the incredible memories we made in our Texas community and with the international fans and Enforcers who came out to support the show. We’re sorry to all our friends who were looking forward to the show’s return in 2022—we join them in that—but we hope to see you again at our other events as PAX return. You will forever be a part of our family and the legacy of PAX. We learned a great deal from you, and future shows will be better for it.
Thank you, San Antonio, for always embodying the PAX spirit by welcoming home gamers and the people who make the things we love.
-The PAX Team
PAX had already faced a turbulent couple of years thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic that all but canceled in-person events and gatherings for 2020 and much of 2021. Interestingly, PAX South set a record in 2015 for highest attendance of a first-year PAX event, but it doesn’t seem like the momentum was able to keep up. Coupled with the current state of the world still putting a big cloud over events and in-person gatherings—PAX West was much smaller this year than in the past due to the pandemic, though exceeded expectations considering the circumstances—it seems that PAX organizers were faced with some tough decisions that ultimately led to PAX South getting cut.
This doesn’t completely eliminate the possibility of seeing PAX South return, or of additional PAX events opening in other cities, but PAX East and West each seem to cover the North American market enough—as well as being spread out across the year—that continuing the event in a third central US city just doesn’t make sense. (PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia is a tabletop-focused event, which serves a very different purpose from the other two.)
PAX West was recently held as a physical event in early September, while PAX Australia happened earlier in October. PAX Unplugged is scheduled for December. They have not yet announced the 2022 schedule, though we now know that PAX South won’t be a part of it.
[Source: PAX]
