I don't understand the commentators saying that Paizo's only remaining move is to roll over and die. Do people think they are some mom-and-pop shop with no money whatsoever?
Do you know the best way to make a small fortune in tabletop gaming?
Start with a large fortune.
They're not some mom-and-pop but they're also not a huge corporation with $100 million just collecting dust in the vaults. Employees cost money. Staff salaries alone likely cost Paizo half-a-million monthly. Plus office space. Plus the printing runs for a half-dozen hardcover books: $10 to print, times 200,000 copies is a couple million per book.
They can't just sit around and burn money for six months or a year. Heck, they couldn't even stop selling PF1 books while building to PF2 and needed to sell playtests to recoup development costs.
That they had never once considered the possibility that the OGL may come under attack and have no plan, no response? The vast majority of their product is already legally distinct from D&D now, they can just rip out the OGL and replace it with something else going forward if they really have to.
But they didn't. And the old product still uses it.
They'd have to go through and re-edit all their old PF2 books to make sure they're non-OGL compliant.
In what universe is a single legal battle (assuming one is fought at all) going to be harder to withstand than the entirety of the Pandemic? If the company was so fragile and on a razor's edge of going kaput, Covid would have killed them first. There's also the ability to just run a big sale if they need quick capital. Or they can get a loan. Lots of possibilities out there without just declaring defeat without a fight.
How can you run a big sale if the majority of your content can't be sold?
Loans are an option. But require collateral. And if they lose the legal fight, they'll never be able to repay the loan.
And as you imply, the pandemic would have also hurt them hard. Shrunk their reserves. This could be the one-two punch that takes them down.
It's not like larger gaming companies haven't folded...