Organization cancels physical PAX East game fair and announces PAX Online 2021

The physical PAX East fair is canceled this year due to the corona pandemic. Organizers ReedPop and Penny Arcade announced this on Monday. Instead, a digital PAX Online event will be held in July.

PAX East 2021 was supposed to take place in Boston between June 3 and 6, but ReedPop and Penny Arcade are now reporting that the games fair will not be held physically again until next year at the earliest. “While we hoped that PAX East could proceed safely, we kept realistic and did not sell tickets or space to exhibitors so as not to inconvenience our friends and partners too much,” the organization wrote. “We will not proceed with a live PAX show until we are sure the show will be safe for everyone.”

This year, instead of the PAX East trade show in Boston, a PAX Online event will be held between July 15 and 18. The organization also held a digital event last year, replacing PAX West. Last year, PAX Online consisted of three live streams, each running 24 hours a day for 9 days. The organizers have not yet announced details about the implementation of PAX Online 2021.

PAX announced in December that it plans to start planning physical events again in 2021. The organization then decided to schedule PAX East 2021 in June. That’s later than usual; PAX East is normally held in March or April. With this, the organization hoped to increase the chance of a physical event. The organization of PAX announced on Monday that it is ‘cautiously optimistic’ that PAX West and PAX Unplugged can continue physically this year. Those two events will start on September 3 and December 10, respectively.