As reported not too long ago, tickets for this year's PAX Prime were sold out in record time. Even though the three day event has been expanded to four, demand for entry is clearly still quite high.
Which also means that shenanigans by those who either wish to buck the system or take advantage of those who are willing to will also be equally visible.
Pretty much every attendee is used to seeing folks in front of the convention center, with a pile of tickets for sale, and have wondered if they're legit. Guess what; they're not. What's being offered are often counterfeits (to be honest, most are pretty unmistakable from the real thing, but no one has been able to crack PAX's fail safes yet), plus scalping is against the rules anyway.
Though organizers of the show are going one step further. According to Polygon, the incredibly brisk tickets sales has resulted in a more through examination of bulk purchases. Basically, those who bought more than the four sets limit had their money refunded. It is assumed that those who went past the limit had plans to scalp them.
All tickets what have been taken back will go on sale in the near future.
For those who missed out the first time, this is obviously great news. Unfortunately, demand for this soon to be back on the market tickets should be equally insane. Robert Khoo, PAX's business manager, went on record to state that less than one percent of total ticket sales were nullified.
According to Khoo:
"We're just being more aggressive about enforcing the rules… We had a rule saying you can only order four sets, but in previous years we were pretty lax about enforcing them."
Again, the rule states that only four sets of tickets can be purchased at a time. And not four pairs of two, but four pairs of four, for a grand total of sixteen. Apparently one of the order that had been cancelled was for someone who somehow nabbed three hundred individual tickets.
At the very least, hey, that means upwards of 300 folk who now have a chance to get inside PAX Prime 2013.