People can watch baseball on TV and yet many still go to games. In person attendance is simply a different experience altogether. Until technology advances to a point where there is no difference between Online and In-person experiences such as conventions, sporting events, amusement parks, etc. The In-Person cons will continue.
I'm sure companies would much rather sell via an online event versus in-person...if the exposure and sales were the same as they got in-person. Hosting an online event is much cheaper than packing up and traveling to GenCon for 5-6 days, but it's just not the same.
While I'm sure some vendors may attend not expecting a huge [monetary] profit, if it wasn't a good investment to spend the time and money to show up at a typical in-person con, we would have switched to online-only events long ago. Apparently Paizo and others did not feel the 50-60% attendance cap and lessened convention space was worth the trouble this year.
All that to say I am confident the show will go on.
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Holy frak, was I scared when I saw this thread got necro'd (until I read the new posts).