PAX Aus 2025: Community, Consumerism, and Concern

Trade shows, by their very nature, provide a finger on the pulse of their respective industry. Extending that metaphor, PAX Australia 2025 suggests the gaming industry has a heart arrhythmia that would send a medical TV show into a two-part season finale.

Anime Atelier took to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center to explore PAX Aus in its 12th year running. Read on to learn more about our experience, including our highlights, frustrations, and the serious concerns that were raised behind closed doors.

State of Gaming In 2025

You don't need to be plugged into the news or constantly monitoring your bank balance to feel the economic crunch. The rising cost of living increasingly means hobby activities—including gaming—are the first sacrifices made to, quite literally, keep the heating on. 

PushSquare recently reported that only 40% of US gamers purchase more than two games per year. The videogame industry is being propped up, in the words of Circana's Mat Piscatella, by "hyper enthusiast, price-insensitive players." In a gaming landscape dominated by free-to-play (F2P) giants like Genshin Impact, players are more inclined to spend in smaller, microtransaction-based formats. F2P shooters, such as Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone, achieve success with cosmetic purchases alone. Where, in that market, do individually, highly-priced titles exist?

We keenly felt this dissonance on the showfloor at PAX Aus 2025. 

As we mentioned earlier, despite PAX's efforts to suggest otherwise, it is a trade show first and a community gathering second. The main show floor was dominated by Nintendo showcasing the Switch 2, which, with its $449.99 USD price, seems laughable when compared with the $499.99 USD price point of Sony's PS5 Digital—and that's including Sony's $50 price hike in August.

Microsoft, which dominated last year's PAX with The Elder Scrolls Online and Doom: The Dark Ages, was almost shamefully tucked away in a corner. The beleaguered Xbox is currently fighting claims that Target and Walmart are removing their products from shelves. Enormous banners promoting the all-too-catchy "Everything is an Xbox" slogan stand in stark contrast to Microsoft's insistence that it remains committed to releasing a new console. This comes weeks after Xbox's confusing and pricey restructure of Game Pass, which prioritizes cloud streaming over actually purchasing and owning any games.

The Australian indie gaming scene remained as vibrant as ever, with a considerable presence from numerous indie developers and from technology universities such as Swinburne and the Academy of Interactive Entertainment. It felt strange to see the most recent Australian success story, Hollow Knight: Silksong, being used as promotional material for Nintendo's booth, while having no presence in the actual indie zone. Then again, the game's announcement derailed other indie releases, so perhaps it was a tactful decision.

Elsewhere on the show floor, PC giants MSI and Centre Com had setups for their latest RGB-infused towers; meanwhile, Secretlab tried desperately to justify the eye-watering $669 USD price tag on their TITAN Evo gaming chairs. But what's the point of a gaming chair when it costs more than the consoles themselves?

The Other Type of Gaming

Taking up the other half of MCEC's enormous convention hall was an area dedicated to board games and trading card games (TCGs). That, too, has been a struggling industry, especially for Pokémon players who are unable to purchase cards due to the boom in scalping and speculative reselling. Seeing a $50,000 AUD ($32,000 USD) PSA 8.5 Charizard for sale felt utterly tone-deaf. Though we don't blame the exhibitors for wanting to sell their product, we have to wonder what type of PAX attendee would be the target customer.

Thankfully, newer card games are filling the market; Riftbound, the League of Legends tie-in TCG, was constantly packed with players checking out the newly released game. We sat down to play Grand Archive for the first time ever. We were delighted by both its similarity to Magic: The Gathering's combat and mechanics, and its dissimilarity to Magic: The Gathering, in that none of the cards were Spiderman-branded.

All weekend, PAX attendees could learn to play Dungeons & Dragons, attend figure-painting sessions, build Gundam models, try out new board games, or browse the multiple shops selling pretty dice. It's here that PAX truly lives up to its community claims, even more so when you look at the roster of panels and events happening all throughout the weekend.

From charity-raising speedruns to panels on disability and trans representation in gaming, some of the best parts of PAX were away from the consumerism on the show floor. Dedicated hangout zones allowed tired attendees to relax on beanbags and whip out their handhelds to swap friend codes or coax the last dying 3DS StreetPass bonus from a diehard Nintendo fan. 

The Cons of Conventions

Unfortunately, putting over 80,000 attendees in a single space invites discomfort and, even worse, poses some legitimate danger to attendees.

The AFK (Away From Keyboard) break room returned to PAX Aus this year, supported by the Beyond Blue mental health organization. Respectfully, we chose not to take photographs, but we found the area comfortable, albeit already overcrowded just a few hours into the event. The AFK space featured dimmed lighting and craft tables; however, the chosen spot was upstairs and frustrating to access.

Worryingly, when signing in to receive our badges, the staff claimed not to be aware of the Hidden Sunflower disability lanyards, despite our noticing many attendees wearing them. Given that MCEC's staff recognize the disability lanyards and the 900 non-visible disabilities, chronic illnesses, and health conditions they represent, we're left to wonder what miscommunication happened between convention staff and PAX organizers. If the worst happened, what help could PAX volunteers actually provide?

And it's not just disabilities that concern us.

PAX Aus is no stranger to hosting problematic streamers and content creators. In 2023, notorious streamers Sam Pepper and Ice Poseidon were forcibly removed from the event after allegations of harassing female attendees. 

Despite PAX's insistence on "Zero Tolerance" and its paid "Enforcers," safety issues persist, prompting many to reconsider their participation.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to Anime Atelier, one former PAX attendee explained their decision not to attend PAX Aus 2025:

I chose not to attend PAX this year due to a few streamers going who I don't think align with the morals and rules that PAX has on their website. These streamers make others uncomfortable and feel unsafe [...] to be in a space with them feels extremely anxiety-inducing, and it is safer for me as a woman to avoid these creators.

Additionally, that same source, who confirmed others did not attend for similar reasons, spoke on the topic of PAX's claims of safety and security:

I believe more can and should be done for the safety of attendees going to PAX. [...] A couple of years ago, I [messaged] PAX on Instagram, highly concerned about [Sam Pepper and Ice Poseidon] who were harassing women. I got no reply. This year [...] I explained I was not going to PAX [as] a person I wanted to report for potentially harming others was going to be there and [PAX's response] was to just report it to the police.

Anime Atelier has sighted these communications between PAX and this former attendee, and can verify their claims. In a return email, PAX Aus insisted on its "700 Enforcers, staff and security personal [sic]," however, their Enforcers are merely temp staff with no background requirements in security.

We felt more scrutinized by the door security than anywhere inside the event hall; individual exhibitors, such as Nintendo, clearly had their own private security on hire, while stall sellers were left to guard their own stock cautiously.

What—if any—safety could be provided to women and vulnerable people at PAX Aus seems woefully inadequate.

PAX Aus 2025 In Summary

In a year that's been dominated by economic struggles and horrific political news, conventions should be a time to unplug and find community. Frustratingly, PAX Aus felt more like a reminder of rampant consumerism, skyrocketing prices, and the unending struggle for LGBTQ, female, and disabled folk to exist without fear. Whether that's a byproduct of Americanisms bleeding across the Pacific into Australia, or signs of a more worrying global trend, is beyond the scope of an anime blog to discuss—but clearly a pertinent concern for some attendees.

The best parts of PAX Aus, to some extent, are not PAX itself. Ignore the capitalists trying to barter your kidney for a new graphics card and find community in board games, retro gaming, and TCGs that aren't trying to replace Bitcoin.

Our favorite part of PAX Aus was being reminded that, despite being a smaller nation on the global stage, Australia has a mighty and enthusiastic gaming and cosplay scene. As always, Aussies come together to support each other through thick and thin with that indefatigable sense of mateship and pride that so uniquely identifies us. One can only hope that Australian events endeavor to remember and respect our unique cultural identity, especially as we navigate these troubled times.

We have reached out to PAX for comment and will update this article with any response.

Anime Atelier was given press passes to attend PAX Aus 2025.