- cross-posted to:
- pathfinder@ttrpg.network
- cross-posted to:
- pathfinder@ttrpg.network
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That is disappointing, but having read the statement by AoN I kinda understand why.
Paizo is having financial troubles, mostly due to things not their fault. The AoN partnership has brought them zero dollars over the last eight years of the partnership.
If I were Paizo, I’d now be looking at either partnering with somebody who could bring in some money, or setting up my own version that I had a plan to monetize.
Since Paizo is encouraging AoN to continue what they are doing under the community use policy, this isn’t something that will break AoN. My guess is that Paizo is going to announce a paid something or other that offers what AoN is losing out on, namely release day rules updates.
This is probably the internal justification but it’s still fucking stupid. You really don’t make money running a website with ads anymore these days. It’s fucking impossible. And then you have the labor of processing rulebooks into webpages and keeping that much info up to date… It’ll be a disaster.
AoN was basically doing Paizo’s job for them for zero cost to Paizo. And the community loved Paizo for it because we older TTRPG enthusiasts have been hurt by overly litigious beancounter types so many times.
I still know a few people at Paizo and I’ve emailed my displeasure and reasoning on why this approach is only going to cost Paizo and undo community goodwill. Don’t expect it to go anywhere, but maybe if enough people do someone will listen.
Oh I agree. My guess is that the powers that be at Paizo are pretty desperate right now, so they’re reviewing and cutting anything that doesn’t contribute revenue. AoN doesn’t cost them anything directly, and has definitely helped spread a lot of goodwill and probably contributed to the Paizo bottom line, but I would bet that they’re hoping to get a bump from people who want release day digital rules but aren’t buying the PDFs. It’s a gamble on getting some more short term revenue vs how much long term goodwill they lose.
The other possibility that comes to mind is that they are trying to get some financing and the lenders/investors/new owners are looking at the AoN agreement as a liability, which on the books it is. I can hear an auditor, “Let me get this straight, you have an agreement to provide another company with your IP, let them put it on the internet, and even provide it to them before your paying customers, and in return they have paid you $0 over the last eight years? That’s gotta go.” This is pure speculation though.
BartyDeCanter Paizo has a well established business and licensing agreement with Roll20 that actually generates revenue, and their Demiplane product functionally competes with AoN. That business relationship is made less valuable through the AoN partnership, so even without speculating about potential loans or investments it makes sense on some level to end that arrangement.
The worrying thing – and the thing that no one seems to have dared to broach, even in the 800 different threads discussing this on Reddit – is that this is a significant factor when looking to sell. There are, obviously, other reasons for wanting to get their house in order, but a big one would be to either seek a significant outside investor, or to sell the whole company outright, which could have deep and possibly horrendous impacts on the future of the system.
Just another reason to get all of your rules in paper or PDF, so your table is resistant to potential paradigm shifts at the publisher.
Wonder if this had anything to do with their recent financial troubles.
