PAX's parent company ReedPOP is doing their darnedest to avoid bankruptcy, and today they posted a message of hope laced with a heaping dose of cognitive dissonance.
With optimism and safety in mind, we're announcing our #PAX 2021 Dates. Read the full statement below: pic.twitter.com/dDMhsJwd7t
— PAX (@pax) December 4, 2020
PAX East is scheduled to be held in June of 2021, which is a giant middle finger to the ESA and E3. ReedPOP did say that this is a tentative schedule built with "optimism and safety in mind."
We reached out to the PAX organizers about their safety plans, and they actually got back to us with some of the new policies that will be implemented:
PAX 2021 Safety Protocols and Procedures
- Temperature and Shower Checks at every entrance
- PAX attendees are pretty smelly, and the organizers will finally monitor basic human hygiene at every entrance to the events
- All lines will have social distancing rules implemented, increasing game demo wait times to six hours
- Game developers will not be held liable for spreading COVID-19 if they pay for ReedPOP's new event insurance
- Devs will still be held accountable for any COVID-19 infections within their teams
- Attendees who contract COVID-19 will not be able to sue devs who sign up for ReedPOP event insurance
- Attendees who contract COVID-19 will be quarantined and sent to a satellite PAX event full of other diseased attendees
- Free COVID-19 vaccine raffle entry for any PAX badge holder
- Attendees who contracted COVID-19 at PAX East 2020 will get a special pin
- No refunds if the pandemic shuts down any of these announced PAX 2021 events
- The money will be added to a pool of funds set aside to pay ReedPOP subsidiary Gamer Network's employees
- If Boston has been overtaken by COVID-19 vaccine-induced zombies, ReedPOP will host the PAX East 2021 event in New York
- Attendees afraid of contracting COVID-19 can pay extra for Super Quarantine badges
- Super Quarantine badges allow attendees to use special bathrooms that are cleaned more than once a week
- No pooping allowed in convention centers
- Attendees will only be able to pee as COVID-19 has been shown to travel through fart and fecal aerosol particles
- PAX Pox will be available for preorder depending on the type of badge you purchase
- VR demos are banned from the showfloor
- Masks will be required (unless you are a Republican)
The ESA has also issued a statement on the news of PAX East 2021's June dates:
"We are going to bring back E3 2021 so hard and everyone who attends will be able to get COVID-19 for no additional charge, unlike our competitors at ReedPOP."
Are you excited for live events to return? Do you think anti-vaxxers will fuck this up too? What's the over/under for COVID-19 outbreaks at gaming conventions next year? Let us know your thoughts in the Shacknews Chatty comment thread below.
- posted by Super Spreader 64
