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Pathfinder 2e creators Paizo end partnership with Archives of Nethys, which offers most of the D&D alternative's ruleset for free (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/pathfinder@ttrpg.network
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We have been told the reason for this decision is that our website has not produced royalties for Paizo.

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[–] 5 points 2 months ago* (3 children)

I posted Paizo's blog about this. It is more than that there have been zero royalties produced in 8 years, but the other costs associated with maintaining the license.

And it likely all stems from the Diamond/JP Morgan debacle.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    Oh whoops, sorry. I didn't see that when I was looking this morning.

    Yeah, it undoubtedly stems from Diamond's theft. I've seen some people saying they suspect ulterior motives. That this is about getting more money from Demiplane by being able to offer them an exclusive contract. Personally, I don't think that's what's going on here. I'd rather assume incompetence than malice. I think they've looked at a balance sheet, seen that it costs them a non-zero amount to manage the deal, seen AoN isn't directly sending them any cash, and said "we're desperate, we need to cut this."

    Ignoring the fact that some of that cost they're associating with AoN is the cost of fighting freebooters who copied images off of AoN...ignoring the fact that those same images are also on Demiplane, who will continue hosting them after this, and so those images will continue to be freebooted at roughly the same rate as previously, requiring the same amount of legal work to fight.

    And ignoring the insane amount of value that AoN provides to their brand by providing such a premium experience completely free of charge. It acts as some amazing marketing for Paizo that they don't have to pay a single cent for.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    ignoring the fact that those same images are also on Demiplane, who will continue hosting them after this

    That was brought up on their Bluesky post.

    As Paizo had to recently lay off multiple people, them cutting costs is logical. Maybe it is not the best way to go about it. When I closed my business I was not making the best decisions near the end. But I did what I thought was best at that time.

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    • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    This is disappointing. As usual, moneyed interests and capitalism ruin everything they touch 😡

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    supernovastar@lemmy.blahaj.zone People were very inflamed about this over on the subreddit. I'm not sure anyone walked away with the lesson that corporations are not frens.

    They're not even fren shaped!

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    The amount of comments on Reddit, Facebook, and the official forums speaking out in defence of Paizo here is just saddening.

    And the sheer tone-deafness from Paizo themselves is astonishing. Just going all through their comments saying "oh don't worry, there's nothing wrong, AoN will still work!" Even if you completely agree with Paizo that this isn't a problem, there's no issue, it's just so tone-deaf to totally brush aside everyone's concerns like that. Terrible PR move all around.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    Zagorath Yeah, this is some incredibly poor PR, right down to the vague finger-pointing at the AoN folks for publishing the information. But it's also the kind of head-scratching, short-sighted decision people make when under a lot of pressure, so I understand why Paizo's doing this.

    They're wrong, and they just burned a ton of good will for the sake of a few bucks in lawyers fees, but I get it. Actually actively defending the choice is a fun kind of bootlicking, though, and has my days of not taking the Pathfinder communities on those platforms seriously coming to a middle.

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    • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (4 children)

    So do we know what AoN is doing. I mean they just have to remove art assests right?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    HubertManne It will be quite a bit more than that. AoN contains a fair bit of Golarion lore-related text that will need to be removed, and it's likely the pages that contain full chapters of the books will have to be pared down or reworded.

    It will be work for the AoN team, and I'm sure they could use some additional volunteers to help out with the process.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 month ago (2 children)

    They have to remove the art assets, remove all their PF1 content, and they will no longer get access to content ahead of time (which enables them to have it available on the site as of the day it officially releases).

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    • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    It's disappointing. But, good business. I get it.

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