The United States event thus falls into a coffin, even though it started in 2015, and we don’t see much hope of it coming back.

PAX South was held annually from 2015 in San Antonio, Texas. However, the team announced on its website that they had received a game over: “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, had 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 an end for the foreseeable future.

The heart of PAX South lives on 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 continuously embodying the PAX spirit by welcoming home gamers and the people who make the things we love,” the PAX team wrote.

Now for the twist: the 2015 debut pulled in the most attendees amongst the first-year events, so there was a definite lack of momentum behind PAX South, and the pandemic has harshly affected the PAX schedule for both 2020 and 2021: PAX West was smaller this year, but it performed better than expected; together with PAX East, these two events can cover most of the North American market. PAX Unplugged (planned to be held in Philadelphia in December) doesn’t count: it’s aimed chiefly at table-top games. PAX Australia had its run earlier this month.

Perhaps the bar was set too high…?

Source: PSL