Paizo laying off 12 due to fallout from Diamond's bankruptcy

Paizo is laying off 12 employees, due to losses sustained from Diamond Comics' bankruptcy last year. Paizo announced the news in a post made to their website today, citing losses caused by ongoing litigation surrounding Diamond's bankruptcy. Paizo stated they lost $2 million in 2025, which has necessitated the move. Diamond was Paizo's exclusive bookstore distributor and Paizo was one of several RPG companies caught up when Diamond declared bankruptcy last year. JP Morgan Chase claimed a lien on all product currently held by Diamond after they declared bankruptcy, which included stock owned by Paizo that was held by Diamond for consignment sales. Diamond also appealed the termination of Paizo's exclusive contract, meaning that Paizo hasn't been able to move to a new bookstore distributor.

Paizo is currently working with their union on the layoffs, with severance offered to impacted employees. If volunteers aren't found, Paizo will layoff the least-senior employee in each impacted division.

Additionally, Paizo will reduce their new Pathfinder Society and Starfinder Society offerings to once a month starting in October. Foundry VTT modules for organized play will also be paused until Paizo can find a way to increase profitability. "These changes are not a retreat," Paizo said of the changes. "Paizo believes strongly in the power of Organized Play and always will, but the current publishing model for Society scenarios is not working and we need to slow down, stem the financial losses from a struggling program and evaluate where to go from here."

 

[Special Unicorn]

Reposting because the other thread was closed.

My heart goes out to everyone affected by the layoffs. I've been there, and it sucks.

1 week of severance per year of service really isn't enough, but given the circumstances...

They should aggressively sue Diamond and JP Morgan. Not allowing Paizo to terminate a contract that Diamond can no longer follow through with, is just pure evil.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

They should aggressively sue Diamond and JP Morgan. Not allowing Paizo to terminate a contract that Diamond can no longer follow through with, is just pure evil.

They're not going to get any sort damages from Diamond, I suspect, given the circumstances. And JP Morgan has an army of Manhattan lawyers.

It's a terrible situation for Paizo to be trapped in.

 

[Nightfly]

Just awful. Paizo's transparency here is greatly admirable, though. There's no vagueness and no phony positivity. They're handling this about as well as they could.

 

[SteveC]

This is a rough situation because it has affected so many publishers. I am glad Paizo is still standing after it. It's immensely frustrating that the business part of our hobby has issues like this. My heart goes out to the people who are now looking for work.

There really is no redress for the real pain this has caused, and that's the worst part.

 

[jdrakeh]

Diamond has made things very difficult for dozens of publishers that I'm aware of. And, when given an opportunity to be decent human beings and stop the bleeding, they've doubled down on being garbage people. Comics publishers have been hit very hard. Jolly Blackburn, for example, has posted on Facebook about how he's being forced to take Knights of the Dinner Table entirely online for the time being (i.e. he no longer has a viable means for physical distribution).

 

[prongbuck]

Another thing I found interesting from the Knights of the Dinner Table/Jolly Blackburn situation is that Diamond had most of the information about who (businesses not people) was even ordering their product. So even with a new distributor they have to rebuild their business customer database.Jolly has said they have a way to do this but its going to be a long process.

The above is based on this quote from the Cries From The Attic section of Knights of the Dinner Table #323, written by Jolly:
"Compounding the challenge, the collapse of Diamond has also taken with it critical distribution data—information about where issues were being shipped and sold each month. Rebuilding that network from scratch would not be a quick process; realistically, it could take many months, if not years, to fully restore. What this mean is that both print subscriptions and retail sales are temporarily on hold."

 

[jdrakeh]

Yeah, Diamond hurt a lot of people bad. Now the JP Morgan Chase acquisition team seems to be carrying on with doing that. I can't say what I want to here, because Grandma Rule, but I am filled with burning rage.

 

[Parmandur]

Disgusting how much damage Diamond is doing on the way down.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Reposting because the other thread was closed.

My heart goes out to everyone affected by the layoffs. I've been there, and it sucks.

1 week of severance per year of service really isn't enough, but given the circumstances...

They should aggressively sue Diamond and JP Morgan. Not allowing Paizo to terminate a contract that Diamond can no longer follow through with, is just pure evil.

The CEOs of JP Morgan and Diamond deserve to go to Prison for this.

Like wtf is diamond doing, they can't distribute Paizo's books even if they keep exclusivity, all that will achieve is bankrupting Paizo, meaning they won't be there in the future to do business with. Its pure spit, there is no benifit to this, if anything it means no one will ever trust Diamond again.

And its an insane failure of American law that JP Morgan can just straight up steal an innocent companies assets like this. Folks should be going to jail, but like usual the rich corporations get away with it like organized crime they are.

And the sad unpopular truth is, that if this goes on for too long, the best thing Piazo can do for their legacy is sell it to WotC/Hasbro who are big enough and can afford the lawyers to beat this naughty word back.

And please don't shoot the messager, its an opinion of last resort that depends mostly on how long this drags out.