Seattle gaming convention PAX West will not be happening this Labor Day weekend. Instead, it will shift into a nine-day online conference that takes place in the middle of September, the conference’s organizers announced today.
The new PAX Online will take place virtually from September 12th through the 20th. There will be three channels hosting content “non-stop each and every day,” including panels, concerts, competitions, and esports events. PAX Online plans to offer downloadable demos to replicate the experience of trying games out on the show floor, and if you want to get PAX merch, you’ll be able to buy it online.
PAX West’s organizers had said in April that they planned to host the conference as scheduled — by that time, E3, San Diego Comic-Con, Gamescom’s physical show, and other summer gaming events had already been canceled due to the pandemic. But “the more we worked on a solution, the more it became clear that if we really wanted to welcome everybody home, we’d have to remove the physical barriers entirely, and simply take PAX Online,” the organizers said in a blog post.
PAX Online also replaces PAX Australia, which had been scheduled for October 9th through the 11th. This year’s PAX Australia was officially canceled last night, and in a statement, the PAX Australia organizers said the next edition of the show will take place in 2021.
