Paizo Community Update and a Look Ahead

Jim Butler gave a behind-the-scenes look at what's happened over the last year as well as a look ahead.

Paizo's president, Jim Butler, gave a behind the scenes look at what's happened over the last year as well as a look ahead.

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In a press release today, Jim Butler talks about what's been happening since he took over as president a little over a year ago as well as a look to the future.

United Paizo Workers​

Before he became president, Jim lead negotiations to create the tabletop industry's first-ever collective bargaining agreement. Working together with UPW, they have created an agreement that works for both the company and the employees.

Rise of ORC​

This biggest story of the year has been the OGL and publishers leaving it to create ORC. This was a decision Paizo did not take lightly, but they could no longer operated under a license that another corporation could change whenever they wanted to. This caused them to push back the publishing of scheduled books in order to bring forward ORC Remastered rulebooks in November. The shift will also necessitate a change in the Paizo Compatibility License and Community Use Policy. Those will be available for public comment soon.

Reorganization​

Paizo has been working to streamline operations throughout the company, merging teams to better share and work toward common goals to support customers, distributors, and local game stores. The merging of the creative team also added the ability to create games outside the RPG fold, the first of which will be Elemental Stones this fall.

With most of the staff working remotely, they will be closing down their Redmond offices and moving their warehouse over the coming months. There will be some downtime for Paizo.com and the forums as they move their servers to a new data center. They will let the public know about it when they get closer to the move.

New Store and Forums​

As soon as they update their finance platform, Paizo will be replacing their store with a new one. The new store will allow for an easier checkout process with more payment options, a more robust reward program, more subscription options including the ability to skip certain books, and provide better organization.

In addition to investing in a better store experience, they are investigating new platforms to provide a better forum experience. They will provide more updates as they finalize their decision.

Pathfinder Fiction and Licensing​

They will be trying out some new strategies to bring Pathfinder and Starfinder to a wider audience. This is why they've partnered with Owlcat, BKOM, Demiplane, and Hero Lab Online. These games and tools bring more people to the table and make it easier to make characters.

More people means more stories. That includes the ability to use the Pathfinder Infinite and Starfinder Infinite programs to allow creators to produce their own work using Paizo's material and make money for their efforts.

Paizo has also greenlit a standalone Pathfinder novel for 2024. This will allow them to tell stories in ways game products can't and reach fantasy readers.

What's your take on the changes that have happened and are coming down the pipeline?
 

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Dawn Dalton

Dawn Dalton


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Parmandur

Book-Friend, he/him
Why should fans care if Paizo creatives work remotely or not? I'm more interested in how the workers feel about it . . . I'm guessing they're just fine with the arrangement.
Unfortunately, it probsvly means a lot of support staff are downsized...but thisnis probavly more sustainable.
 


Eyes of Nine

Everything's Fine
Unfortunately, it probsvly means a lot of support staff are downsized...but thisnis probavly more sustainable.
Depends on what you mean by support staff.
Cleaning crew is probably not paid by Paizo, but instead contracted out to a 3rd party by the landlord
Paizo specific support staff? Probably already working remote
 


Why should fans care if Paizo creatives work remotely or not? I'm more interested in how the workers feel about it . . . I'm guessing they're just fine with the arrangement.
The interesting thing to me is the full post linked above specifies several states that workers can work remotely from. The states are Colorado, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington. I wonder why those states?

Edit: As others have said, glad they're upgrading their website. It needs it!
 

payn

I don't believe in the no-win scenario
I wonder if they will be moving to a Discourse based forum. If so that would be a HUGE upgrade from the current phpp implementation, which feels very 2008. Of course, if they really wanted to move into the 2020's, they'd have a Discord
There is a discord that peeled away a lot of the forum traffic. A shame because I do not like having long running discussions on discord that are heavily populated.
 


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