Paizo Jessica Price (ex Paizo employee) spills the beans

[TerraDave]

Thread by @Delafina777 on Thread Reader App

@Delafina777: Welp, Paizo just fired their two most senior customer service people (one a woman, one a POC) for apparently being too willing to push back on abusive management. Of course, this also means that the...…

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Thanks, though this just kind of confirms what a difficult read it is.

 

[Parmandur]

Oh it's definitely possible that nothing actually happens internally, but their reputation will be shot when that happens

Yeah, my prognosis for both internal reform and customer relations is bad.

 

[Parmandur]

No, of course, it's terrible!! As is scientific racism! I'm not excusing its inclusion in a game. What I'm saying is that fantasy rpgs already include a lot of elements derived from late nineteenth century colonial ideology, so if you are playing dnd or pathfinder, those games and the fantasy genre are already enmeshed in a lot of terrible, essentializing ideas. (Also, fwiw, phrenology is not a specifically theosophist idea, and had wider purchase in Victorian scientific communities)

Price's discussion of Mona's interests are beyond just theosophy, but that he was into 19th century pseudo-science and occultism in general, and that editors fought him on including such material in books.

 

[Retreater]

Oh it's definitely possible that nothing actually happens internally, but their reputation will be shot when that happens

I wonder if the damage is already done. Seeing the large number of fans dropping them on their own site, cancelling subscriptions, etc., can't be a good thing. It's not like we're talking about customers like me (who just gets the big rulebooks and the occasional adventure).
Changing direction with PF2 cost them some fans. This might be the death knell.

 

[Galandris]

The US judicial system has failed victims of discrimination, workers, people of color, and sexual assault survivors again and again and again. Though, one could argue that what might be regarded as a bug (the inability of the courts to provide justice) is actually a feature and says a lot about the power dynamics of US society and the way that sexism, racism, and homophobia is not just a matter of individual instances (say, at Paizo), but institutional and systemic.

I won't comment on the situation of the US system's efficiency specifically, but based from personal experience as a public prosecutor, even with the best intentions the lack of funding is a key problem. Justice is a public service nobody wants to fund: many people think they don't need it (and it's true: a large majority of people will never set a foot in a court), a significant part of the population think it's a "service" used by criminals instead of seeing it as a service used by victims, so why bother funding it... If you cut funding to a school, parents will complain about their children's results. If you cut funding to police, residents of the neighborhood will complain about fearing to get out after dark. If you underfund a court... nobody will complain directly. And the regular degredation of the efficiency of this public service that results from chronic underfunding will reinforce the belief that courts are pointless. Add to this that the goal of the judicial system isn't to satisfy victims but provide an equitable decision, so often plaintiff are disappointed with the sentence in criminal affairs) and you have a recipe for having a public service nobody wants to actually pay for taxes for. So if as you mentionned the result in the US judicial system is a feature and not a bug, then "easiest to implement" mean to achieve the goal of not providing an efficient justice is to just let the system underfunded long enough.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Unlike WotC, Paizo has no investors to answer to, and the owners are buds with management. Historically, this means that toxicity is a regenerative cycle that doesn't really ever get fixed.

This is true, but they have less of a shield. Hasbro and their status as the brand titan of the industry allows WOTC to shrug off a lot of stuff. The Orion Black accusations last year stand out in that regard.

In this case, Paizo has to do something to survive: they lack the attachment to larger brand, as well as rely on a devoted customer base. Knowing the owners isn't going to save you when you devalue what's being owned.

We'll see. Mona's response is easily the best, though he had the easiest stuff to address. Jeff and Jason... much less so. We'll see what happens in the days and weeks to come.

 

[TheSword]

Saw this on the paizo Reddit. Read on to the follow up comments.
TLDR the employee says there are definitely issues and the firing was definitely a shocker. Though they claim one or more of Prices allegations are untrue.

 

[TheSword]

Yeah, this statement did go down too well! That won’t cut the mustard!

paizo.com - Forums / Paizo: General Discussion: Staff Change Update from Paizo President Jeff Alvarez

paizo.com

 

[Parmandur]

This is true, but they have less of a shield. Hasbro and their status as the brand titan of the industry allows WOTC to shrug off a lot of stuff. The Orion Black accusations last year stand out in that regard.

In this case, Paizo has to do something to survive: they lack the attachment to larger brand, as well as rely on a devoted customer base. Knowing the owners isn't going to save you when you devalue what's being owned.

We'll see. Mona's response is easily the best, though he had the easiest stuff to address. Jeff and Jason... much less so. We'll see what happens in the days and weeks to come.

I'd say just the opposite: the need to protect investor's meant that WotC actually responded last year, and succeeded. Detached private owners who are themselves toxic may be more inclined to protect their toxic cronies.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I'd say just the opposite: the need to protect investor's meant that WotC actually responded last year, and succeeded. Detached private owners who are themselves toxic may be more inclined to protect their toxic cronies.

They responded by...?

 

[humble minion]

I wonder if the damage is already done. Seeing the large number of fans dropping them on their own site, cancelling subscriptions, etc., can't be a good thing. It's not like we're talking about customers like me (who just gets the big rulebooks and the occasional adventure).
Changing direction with PF2 cost them some fans. This might be the death knell.

While I haven't been a regular Paizo customer since a loooong time ago, around the time of the release of PF 1st ed, it's always looked to me from the outside that Paizo could be particularly vulnerable to this sort of thing.

The produce very high volumes of material - all the AP releases which are a massive amount of content, plus multiple sourcebooks etc per year. On a pure pages-per-year metric, their output dwarfs WotC, and almost anyone else i can immediately think of. And with the PF1->2 transition, and the fact that 5e seems to have brought people back to D&D who were not 4e fans, it seems to me that their customer base is probably not expanding at a huge rate.

What they do, however, is though subscriptions and a high release tempo, and their extremely loyal customer base, earn a lot of money per customer. The 'whale' strategy, as well-known from the video gaming industry. However, that does make them much more vulnerable than someone like WotC. WotC sells a small number of books to a vast number of people. If they alienate customers, they lose the small number of purchases those customers would make, and they probably go ahead without further ado. If Paizo, with its small base of high-spending customers who seem to have a very tight community who are 'extremely online' to a degree that WotCs larger customer base generally aren't, alienates customers, it's a different matter. You lose even a few dozen big subscriptions, and it's not a small deal over there.

And it's not like Paizo is raking in the dough by their own testimony. When the controversy about Agents of Edgewatch erupted and there was calls to delay, abandon, or rewrite it, at least one Paizo person basically said that going 6 months without an AP (since there wasn't time to bring another AP forward to replace it) would mean a hit to Paizo's cashflow that would literally kill the company. Mind you, I don't know how one squares that statement with Price's anecdote about Mona flying to New York to buy $3000 suits, but that's another matter...

 

[Parmandur]

They responded by...?

Quite a few things, I'm not going to list them all, but diverse hires, actually competent statements and actual rule changes have been implemented in the aftermath.

 

[Gradine]

 

[mythago]

You only got half of it, or maybe all of it but it's worth clarifying anyway: we can't neither give nor deny any credence to complaints. Refusing to give credence is the exact same error as giving credence: since we don't have the ability to review the complete evidence, we can't determine whether it's true or not. It's undetermined and there is no "guilty party": neither the employee (who could be right or guilty of libel) nor the company (who could be right or guilty of endangering the life of their employees) is guilty and therefore the only thing to do is encourage the plaintiff to contact the regulatory bodies to get vindicated. It can't always be easily done (from lack of fund, insufficent access to these institutions or state of mind (in the case of victims of abuse who simply can't realize their situation). In this case, I hope labor unions would help overcome any difficulty in getting access to a court. Going public is certainly worthwhile when denouncing something that is legal but one wants to change (ie, a political problem) but it doesn't seem to be the case here: the situations described seem clearly already illegal (I am pretty sure it's illegal nearly everywhere to discriminated based on gender or to refuse to clean an office to the point it's becoming a health hazard). The judicial branch is here to help (or at least it should be) and it's a sad situation when Twitter is preferred to the relevant authorities.

1) We're not a jury; this isn't a courtroom where we are weighing whether to issue criminal or financial penalties to Paizo. The idea that we are not allowed to have opinions on things others tell us until a jury or administrative body has issued a formal ruling on their claims is ridiculous, and nobody operates that way in their ordinary lives.

2) False dilemma, counselor; people who post things on Twitter are not doing so because they had to choose between Twitter or a courtroom and chose the former. People are allowed to - and do - talk about things on Twitter whether or not they are able to take legal action about those things.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Quite a few things, I'm not going to list them all, but diverse hires, actually competent statements and actual rule changes have been implemented in the aftermath.

Oh God. Diversity hires don't mean anything when it's not in management, and it's worth noting that Black was a diversity hire; the whole point was that his ideas weren't listened to and/or being stolen by others. Hell, there was that entire fiasco with a POC's adventure getting mauled by a senior editor without their knowledge this year. And I will wholly disagree on the "competency" of their statements or their "rule changes".

What WOTC has is the ability to ride things out because their brand is big enough that hyper-aware internet fans will not sink them. Full stop, that's one of their advantages. Paizo doesn't have that, which makes me hope that they'll move more drastically than WOTC ever would. But we're only at the start of this.

Edit: Lol, this is the first time I can remember getting put on "Ignore" by someone for something. What a weird turn.

 

[Parmandur]

Oh God. Diversity hires don't mean anything when it's not in management, and it's worth noting that Black was a diversity hire; the whole point was that his ideas weren't listened to and/or being stolen by others. Hell, there was that entire fiasco with a POC's adventure getting mauled by a senior editor without their knowledge this year. And I will wholly disagree on the "competency" of their statements or their "rule changes".

What WOTC has is the ability to ride things out because their brand is big enough that hyper-aware internet fans will not sink them. Full stop, that's one of their advantages. Paizo doesn't have that, which makes me hope that they'll move more drastically than WOTC ever would. But we're only at the start of this.

Yeah, don't expect anything better than what they've done so far.

 

[mythago]

Saw this on the paizo Reddit. Read on to the follow up comments.
TLDR the employee says there are definitely issues and the firing was definitely a shocker. Though one or more of Prices allegations are untrue.

TL;DR - an anonymous person claiming to be a Paizo employee made a vague Reddit post and claimed some of Price's allegations were false, then ignored multiple requests to clarify which.

 

[Ancalagon]

TL;DR - an anonymous person claiming to be a Paizo employee made a vague Reddit post and claimed some of Price's allegations were false, then ignored multiple requests to clarify which.

this has been brought up in the thread previously; as you say, the refusal to say what was the falsehood makes this anonymous post... kinda suspicious and useless.

 

[Fildrigar]

I'm much more concerned about the claim that Bulmahn sends around unsolicited dick pics.

This is far from the first time I've heard this. I'm honestly surprised this is the first time it's been mentioned publicly.

 

[Justice and Rule]

TL;DR - an anonymous person claiming to be a Paizo employee made a vague Reddit post and claimed some of Price's allegations were false, then ignored multiple requests to clarify which.

this has been brought up in the thread previously; as you say, the refusal to say what was the falsehood makes this anonymous post... kinda suspicious and useless.

They address it... which is to say, they don't really address it.