> The vendors are not the customer. They're important, but secondary to the gamers by a wide margin. Actually no, unless PAX has a very unusual business model

> The vendors are not the customer. They're important, but secondary to the gamers by a wide margin. Actually no, unless PAX has a very unusual business model (which I've seen attempted by one event organiser once, and it didn't go well) the vendors are more important than customers. Obviously, both are technically customers, as both pay money and if you lose 100% of either group your event is dead. But generally speaking vendors are considered more valuable - largely because each single vendor is worth X visitors in revenue (where X > 1). This is still a good move by PAX though, because a.) PR, they got to be part of this story, b.) The exhibitor they banned (for all we know they weren't even going to have a booth - PAX might have just banned someone who wouldn't have been giving them any money anyway) was small enough that the lost revenue was small, and I imagine very replaceable with another exhibitor; meanwhile the upside in PR and what consumers think of them is greater, as a small move shows people that they can trust PAX events to only host "good" companies.