There’s been a bit of recent drama around Paizo. If you’ve been following Pathfinder 2nd edition, Pathfinder in general, or just TTRPGs in general, this isn’t really news. This seems to be a pretty regular occurrence these days.

Recently, Rose Winds LLC, the owners of the Archives of Nethys came out and said that Paizo, the writers/creators of the Pathfinder and Starfinder series of TTRPGs and related products was breaking up with them. The reason? Financial, but not financial.

Both, as of writing, today, have released a “Joint Statement”

Honestly, I’m not going to do a great job portraying the entire situation. Ronald the Rules Lawyer put out two great videos discussing these things in detail, but the TL;DR is this:

The Archives of Nethys has been the “Psuedo-Official” page for all of Paizo’s game’s rules. To include the original Pathfinder 1st edition rules. For the past 8 years, they’ve been “Officially” working with Paizo, to include an actual license, contract, agreement, whatever. That license/agreement was that Rose Winds LLC would receive an early copy of the books, so they could update the Archives of Nethys (AoN) and have it ready on launch/release day. Paizo no longer wants to work with Rose Winds LLC because they aren’t making Paizo any money, and Paizo can’t seem to really come up with a reason why. They’re now “Working together” even though it doesn’t feel that way.

That was a long TL;DR, but it’s kind of important to understand the context. I want to get in to the meat and potatoes of why this has been a problem, starting with…

Archives of What?

Rose Wind LLC is a group of unpaid volunteers, who receive money via Patreon donations to maintain the site. AoN started years ago to be the official Source Reference Document (SRD) of Pathfinder, because Paizo didn’t want to pay to have someone maintain it, they dumped it on the community.

Remember that, it’s incredibly important. Paizo asked the community to work, for free, to maintain their game rules. Something they directly benefited from, without paying them.

Rose Wind (RW) has been supporting the AoN for years, maybe a decade. They’ve been invaluable to anyone who ever gave a shit about Paizo’s RPGs. Paizo themselves never cared how their game actually worked in game. They would release a book, a PDF, and let the world handle how it was accessed. PDFs are notoriously hard to actually use in game, Books even more so. Having a free, quick and high quality SRD is incredibly important to the overall health of a game.

I want reiterate that RW are unpaid volunteers. They spend their time, literally for no pay, besides maybe some share of the proceeds from the patreon, to work on keeping the AoN up to date, for the benefit of the players, and ultimately, to Paizo.

So what’s the problem?

Some Background

I’ve been playing Pathfinder since Paizo made books for Dungeons and Dragons. Paizo started out writing material for DnD. They stopped when Hasbro started their Greedy Dick character arc (Wow, that hasn’t changed at all, has it?).

Paizo has gotten the reputation of being “The Good Guys”. They’re progressive, forward thinking. They treat their employees well, they communicate and worth with the community, they supported their employees unionizing, everything you could want from a company. They’re ethical and treat their community well.

Except when they don’t.

Paizo will normally communicate with the community when something is going wrong, but it seems only when it would be good PR. See, they’ll write a blog post about how their entire stock of books is held up in litigation, because their sole book distributer , Diamond Comics, went bankrupt, and they have to wait to get their stock out. So what did the community do? Rally behind Paizo, supported and understood their decision to lay off employees to get them through the short term.

They’ll happily talk about that, because they’re the victim. They’ll happily “lead the charge” against Hasbro when they (Hasbro) rug pulled everyone with the OGL changes.

See, Paizo is the good guy!

Except, in 2024, when they decided to change their Community Use Policy to the much worse “Fan Content Policy”. Which would include amazing details such as requiring all fan-made supplements to Pathfinder or Starfinder to be published on their own shit version of Drive Thru RPG, Pathfinder/Starfinder Infinite. Which required creatures to sign the rights to their work over to Paizo. That sounds familiar, right? Because Hasbro did the exact same thing, and Paizo lead the charge against it! They’re the good guys! They wrote blog posts and posted videos and more about how evil Hasbro is.

But you know, they did the same thing.

As a special point: The OGL thing happened in early 2023. in mid 2024, they tried to pull this.

Did they roll it back? Sure. But you see, they didn’t do it because it was wrong, they did it because the community rightly pushed back. Which leads me to my main point:

Paizo are FairMarket Friends and need to get bent

The Term “Fairweather Friend” is meant to describe a person who’s only around when they need you, or nothing is really wrong. The moment you need them, their friendship, their support, they vanish. Usually coming back when you’ve gotten over whatever problem you had.

Paizo is a Fair-Market- Friend. They’re the good guys, ethical, forward thinking and work with the community, when it makes them money. When it directly benefits them, they’re the good guys! But the moment that changes, suddenly they don’t like talking about what they’re doing. Suddenly instead of reaching out to the community to “Lead the charge” and “Be the voice”, they quietly email Rose Winds to tell them to get fucked and die.

Didn’t see a blog post about that until after Rose Winds made a public statement, which Paizo whined about. Paizo Assuming that their most loyal volunteers would keep their mouths shut and just accept the new terms.

The “Fan Use Policy” was the first indication that Paizo is like this. This isn’t a “One off” thing, this is who they are. Hasbro did the Exact same thing, and got (rightly) crucified over it. But when Paizo does it? Oh well you know it’s just a slip up.

I need you to remember that Paizo is a company, their goal is to make money, they are not your friend, they are not your ally. If posting anti-gay rhetoric and pushing white supremacist shit in their games would make them the most money, they would do it.

They flood their games with Rainbows and gay couples because they think it will make them money. (Especially after the 2021 allegations lol). Like Generic American Corporation after June, I’m beginning to think they probably, really don’t care about those things and are simply trying to play the market, their customers, because they know that we value those things. So of course they “value” these things too! (So long as it makes us money)

What does Paizo have to say?

The long and the short of it is this: Paizo wants you to think it’s a financial issue. It isn’t, but that’s what they want you to think.

Paizo had no issues telling you how bad things were when Diamond Comics went bankrupt and how they had to lay off staff to cover the loss. But suddenly the reasons for this decision are vague. Because the reason is that they want to make more money, they would make more money if people moved over to Pathfinder Nexus.

Pathfinder Nexus is a rules repository for Pathfinder and Starfinder. Imagine you took AoN and made it suck dick and then nickle and dime you as hard as DnD Beyond does. That’s Pathfinder/Starfinder Nexus.

Paizo gets royalties when you buy things through their Nexus partner. No you don’t get discounts on shit you actually own (at least, I could not see that you could) just like Hasbro’s DnD Beyond. So if you support your Friendly Local Game Store, and Paizo, by buying physical books there (or even direct from Paizo) well you can get fucked sideways, kiddo. Buy it again, pig.

Conclusion

I’m ending it here, it’s a bit short, because there’s nothing else to say. Paizo and Rose Winds reached an “Agreement” which still isn’t good enough. The solution? Remove Jim Butler as President. Fire him completely. He was effectively in Charge since 2021, it was under his purview that he tried to scam players the same way the Hasbro did with the Fan Use Policy, he’s the one who pushed this bullshit with Rose Wind.

Throw him out.

I, for one, will no longer be supporting Paizo. I’ve had my subscription for as long as they offered it. I’ve spent hundreds, maybe even thousands in their garbage store, on their books, token art, foundry modules, everything. I’ll no longer be giving them my money until Jim Butler is removed.

Until then, Paizo can get bent and you, too, should call for his removal. If Paizo, and I mean all of Paizo, truly cares about fixing these issues, Jim has to go, and I want to see this fixed in writing.

Sorry for the heated post. This is something near and dear to my heart and it’s been bugging me. What’s also bugging me is that the community just accepts what Paizo does and goes “yeah what are you gonna do” when they do the exact same thing that Hasbro did, yet we’ll never let that go. So why this? Why the FUP?

Because it’s Paizo, and they’re the good guys.