Pathfinder Online Layoffs; Ryan Dancey Leaves Company

Paizo CEO Lisa Stevens has announced that Goblinworks has had to lay off nearly the entire staff of Pathfinder Online. "We knew we needed a certain amount of money to finish to build the game, and we came really damn close, but we just couldn’t find the last bit of funding that we needed. […] Last Friday, we had to lay off most of the staff. […] I couldn’t pay them anymore. We gave them lots of warning, so they all knew this was coming." Not only that, apparently Ryan Dancey left the company two weeks ago! That leaves three employees (who are continuing work on the game), who are being moved to the Paizo offices; the Goblinworks offices are being closed. The company is seeking $1-$2 million from other investors to finish the game.

Pathfinder Online was being produced by Goblinworks, a new company spearheaded by Ryan Dancey and Lisa Stevens, amongst others. It has had two successful Kickstarters already - one for a million dollars, and the other for a $300K technology demo.

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Here's the full announcement from Lisa Stevens:

To the Pathfinder Online Community

From the beginning of the three year journey to create Pathfinder Online, the one constant has been the support of our community and for this I thank you. We have had ups and downs including heated debates on design, implementation and overall gameplay. We have literally battled together (or against each other) and I know you enjoy playing the game as much as I do. I also know that the community comes together during tough times, and it is probably no surprise that we are currently in a tough spot right now. There are a number of things that have occurred in the past two weeks that you need to be brought up to date on.

As we have been on this journey to create Pathfinder Online with you for over three years now, we have striven to be as transparent as possible with you. We just shared the following message with the community during our weekly Keepside Chat. In full transparency, here is a quick run down of the state of our game:

EE10.2 is on ZOG for final testing and should roll out to live on Thursday or Friday morning.

EE11 is targeted for the end of September

Ryan Dancey has had to resign from the company for personal reasons (Lisa Stevens will be acting CEO)

Finances are tight at Goblinworks, which has resulted in the layoff of the majority of Goblinworks staff

CTO Mark Kalmes, Art Director Mike Hines, and Designer Bob Settles continue to push the game forward (your monthly subscriptions are what keep these three employed and the server up)

Goblinworks is in talks with multiple game publishers to take the game on and bring it to Open Enrollment

I know that is a lot to take in, so I will share what details we can below:

Game status (EE10.2 and EE11)

We are in final testing before pushing EE10.2 to the live server with its fully revamped and improved new player experience, buy orders for the auction house as well as auction sales histories, settlement chat, and the new crystal ogres monthly event, as well as turning the previous event (The Wrath of Nhur Athemon and its Shadow counterpart) into an ongoing escalation, and making a bunch of bug fixes and improvements. The team has been working hard on this and on EE11 for most of July and August. EE11 is done in design, almost entirely done in art, and just needs a bit more programming to get it to the point where we can test. It will take settlement activities to the next level by allowing you to customize and build your settlements the way you want to. Building a settlement will be a large group task, with lots of raw materials to gather and refine before buildings can be erected. We will also have the dark elves monthly event ready, providing more PVE content for those who are focused on that aspect of the game. The core team has the goal of shipping EE11 by the end of September, and we'll keep you updated on our progress.

Ryan Dancey

Ryan Dancey needed to resign from the company for personal reasons. We were very sad that he needed to leave us, but supported his decision because it is in the best interests of Ryan’s life outside Goblinworks. In Ryan’s absence, the board of directors has appointed me Acting CEO.

Finances

We have always known that we would need a certain amount of money to make Pathfinder Online a reality. Some delays in getting the game to market coupled with some anticipated funding falling through have left us about 75% short of the money we need to finish the game and bring it to Open Enrollment. We knew that we could cut our burn rate (the rate at which expenses burn your cash reserves) by having folks participate in Early Enrollment and that was always the plan, though we never thought that the Early Enrollment subscribers could carry the company to Open Enrollment. We knew we needed that full investment amount to do that. We had numerous times this year where the full funding was dangling in front of us only to be snatched away at the last moment. Very frustrating, but we moved forward and kept looking for somebody to come through with the money we needed to see the game through.

Due to the commitment that you have made to the game, your current subscriptions are able to keep the core team employed and the servers live. We will continue to move the game forward with that team and keep the servers live as long as the continued financial support from the community is there. But that means we need you, the Pathfinder Online Community, to continue to support us with your monthly subscription fees. They are very literally what is keeping the servers paid for, and keeping our core team employed, working on EE11, and talking with various potential partners about purchasing the game so they can finish it. If you wish to see the game through to its finish, we need you to support it financially for the next few months, and if you know people that want to support it, encourage them to subscribe now. (During this period, we will offer only month-to-month subscriptions.)

On August 28, we had to lay off the majority of the Goblinworks staff. Continuing to push the game forward are CTO Mark Kalmes, Art Director Mike Hines, and Designer Bob Settles. We have been keeping the staff abreast of our efforts to find funding for Pathfinder Online and that we would likely have to lay them off on the 28th. We felt it was super important to give our employees warning so they could plan their lives accordingly. Their efforts to line up new jobs led to some of the rumors about layoffs. So why didn’t we announce this earlier? Because there was and still remains a chance for Pathfinder Online to get its funding and continue forward, so it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that we would have to lay the staff off until Friday, the 28th.

Future

For the past few weeks, we have been shopping Pathfinder Online to a number of other game publishers, looking for a good fit to take the game on and fund it over the finish line. There have been quite a few companies coming out of the woodwork to discuss this with us and we are in ongoing talks with a number of them about the possibilities. More companies enter the fray every day. These kinds of things take some time, though we are motivated to see them through as quickly as we can. At any moment, one of these publishers could agree to buy the game and we could quickly ramp up to full tilt again. Due to confidentiality, we can’t provide information on these negotiations. Rest assured that you will be the first people we tell when there is news we can share.

This isn’t a super rosy picture, but we aren’t dead yet! The Goblinworks team and the Pathfinder Online community have been underdogs for pretty much the entire project’s history. But we have persevered and survived. Sometimes it is darkest right before the dawn. When I was at White Wolf, we were close to having our electricity and phones shut off in the month before Vampire: The Masquerade released and became a huge hit. At Wizards of the Coast, we had to lay off the entire staff for 9 months before Magic: The Gathering launched and became one of the most successful games in history. You have my word that I will work relentlessly to find the right partner to take Pathfinder Online through to the finish line. The team has brought the ball down the field to the red zone, and now we just need somebody to punch it over the goal line.

I will be hosting another Keepside Chat on Wednesday, September 8th at its normal time of 5pm PST. You can join the chat live by going to:

Golarion.mumble.com

Port 3093

The ability for us to make Pathfinder Online has always been entirely dependent upon you, the Pathfinder Online Community and the support you have given us. I would like to thank the Pathfinder Online community for your fierce dedication, support, feedback, and drive to see this game made well. The only reason to make Pathfinder Online is you, our customer. I hope you will stay with us over the next few months as we search for that proper partner to finish the game. It is your support, literally, that will allow this to happen. Without you, there is no Pathfinder Online.

You have my eternal gratitude,

Lisa Stevens
Acting CEO
Goblinworks Inc.





Original post:

Goblinworks has laid off all but three of the Pathfinder Online staff.

 

[Agamon]

Other than, potentially, a brief window where WotC wasn't actually putting out any significant D&D product, there never has been a third party company that has outsold them.

But anyway, whether the OGL/d20 licenses were a success or not depends on who you talk to. Were they a failure for Dancey? Were they a failure for the fans? How about for the many small game companies that profited off the licences? And of course, was it a success for WotC? And really, different layers of management over at WotC/Hasbro, and different management teams over time, might also have different opinions on whether OGL and d20 was a success.

I'd argue that the licences were a stupendous success for the fans, for small game companies, and for Ryan Dancey. I'd argue that the folks over at WotC during the 3E era were happy with some of the results of the license, but unhappy with some of the unforeseen side effects. Which is why, during 4E, we got a different, more restrictive license. But I also think all this arguing about the granular details of success is a bit silly and just more fan crankiness.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is my point. Great awesomeness for the fans, sure, can't argue that. WotC, not so much. Dancey came up with it while working for WotC. That's all I'm saying.

And yeah, it was a passing comment, I didn't think it would take over thread.

 

[Mistwell]

Nobody got "burned", no promises were broken. I have no sympathy for those who feel burned, although I'd rather the project worked out for fans and for Goblinworks. All those folks invested in a project that failed. That's what happens sometimes when you invest money into something. Saying that folks were burned implies bad action on the part of Goblinworks, of which there is no evidence. And by "bad action", I don't mean incompetence or making mistakes, but a deliberate attempt to deceive and scam folks out of money. So, yeah, I got no sympathy for "burned" fans or investors.

Did Dancey, and other Goblinworks employees, hype up their project? Yes, of course they did! Where they dishonest about it? Or simply believed in their own hype? You and I don't know for sure, but without any evidence to the contrary, I'm going to assume that Dancey et all were 100% honest with their backers and truly believed in the promise of their project. The fact that the project failed doesn't change that.

So in other words no, you have no sympathy for those people, and will not give them the benefit of the doubt. Dancey, him you will give all the benefit of the doubt to, but not to the fans who are upset right now. Got it.

 

[billd91]

So in other words no, you have no sympathy for those people, and will not give them the benefit of the doubt. Dancey, him you will give all the benefit of the doubt to, but not to the fans who are upset right now. Got it.

Why should us fans who put some money into the kickstarter be upset? I got the promised goodies. The end product didn't work out but that's investing in R&D for you.

 

[myscha_sleddog]

Guess Paizo should stick to milking the work someone else created the foundation to...

Heh.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

WotC seems to have succeeded. Twice. DDO and Neverwinter. Plus a non-MMo (SCL) coming up.

Two successes from the largest rpg company doesn't really mean that it's a good idea for most tabletop rpg companies to go the software (particularly MMO) route. There have been many, many more failures than successes over the years.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

Tabletop RPG companies totally need to keep trying various things. Video games, MMOs, board games, card games, mobile apps, the lot. Hell, movies and novels and comics too!

If they can do it without failing to deliver on backed Kickstarter projects or nearly putting themselves out of business (ex. Chaosium), go for it. More power to them. The recent track record for videogames, MMOs, and movies based on tabletop rpgs isn't good, but someone could turn that around with enough money and really good planning, design, and marketing. WotC might be able to do something like that with Hasbro's assistance and backing. It will be interesting to see if they can, since they seem to be putting a lot of faith in the value of their IPO.

Movies, MMOs, and videogames are expensive to make, and so they need to find a certain degree of success among non-tabletop rpg players to be financial successes. Pathfinder Online didn't look good right from the beginning, unfortunately. I would have been more surprised if it has actually worked out in the long run.

 

[Dire Bare]

So in other words no, you have no sympathy for those people, and will not give them the benefit of the doubt. Dancey, him you will give all the benefit of the doubt to, but not to the fans who are upset right now. Got it.

Yup.

Although, in my limited knowledge of the reaction to Goblinworks implosion, there seem to be more people upset who DIDN'T invest than folks who did. The folks who did got material rewards for their investment, and got to play the game in beta, and none of that was taken away. Just the final prize, the game itself, which is a bummer to be sure, but ce la vie!

 

[Henry]

Note that while once upon a time Fate was an OGL adaption of Fudge, nowadays it's not. Similar concepts, and they share some metaphorical DNA, but Fate is no longer a Fudge derivative.

Actually, I checked their website before posting that, and you still licence FATE product through one of two ways: Creative Commons, or OGL. Open licensing is still an integral part of FATE and companies that use it, and according to their history, the OGL back at the time answered a sticky legal question about their use of FUDGE's core mechanic, so while it doesn't rely on OGl to exist any more, open licensing in general is super-important to it.

One of my favorites of the OGL-licensed 3e knockoffs was Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved. Ran a campaign of that for a while. Still think I like what he did with the rules better than Pathfinder.

Agreed - i ran a few one shots, but still hold a lot of love for that system, wit it's non-rogue Rogues, fantastic totem warriors, and the Magus class that was the prototype for how 5e does magic now!

 

[Starfox]

About licensing and good computer game in general, without specifically talking about Goblinworks:

My general feel is that anything that uses a license is likely to be less good than it would have been without that license. The maker is relying on the license to generate interest, and is paying for the privilege. That means less money for actually making a good game and less reliance on building your own reputation.

I would have hoped for the opposite to be true; because a game under license is almost assured to get a certain audience, it becomes a less risky speculation to put in the money to make it a resounding success. Maybe this has happened once ot twice, but in my experience it is not the rule.

Now, there are obviously examples of good games made under license. I would argue that the Old Republic games for Star Wars is one such example, but they were made by a very reputable firm. When a firm I've not heard of makes a game under license, I'm likely to ignore it.

 

[smiteworks]

I would have hoped for the opposite to be true; because a game under license is almost assured to get a certain audience, it becomes a less risky speculation to put in the money to make it a resounding success. Maybe this has happened once ot twice, but in my experience it is not the rule.

Now, there are obviously examples of good games made under license. I would argue that the Old Republic games for Star Wars is one such example, but they were made by a very reputable firm. When a firm I've not heard of makes a game under license, I'm likely to ignore it.

My viewpoint is almost the exact opposite. Most of the studios we know today as big name studios or successful studios are that way because of how well they did with a licensed product. It's nice to see if they have a track record with past development projects, but I wouldn't even call that a requirement for success. Having a well known license with a strong history means that a small development team can focus more on the technical aspects of building a game and not have to find the same level of talent for both development and story. Both Paizo and Wotc have spent a lot of money on talented authors to develop their worlds and a license is probably a small price to pay for access to this for many teams.

On top of that, most companies that license their name out to someone do a fair amount of due diligence before they let someone use their name. It's not all about money. Those companies don't want someone to sully their name, so it's not like they let just anyone take the name and use it as long as they pay for the license.

Software development is risky, but every once in a while you find that perfect mix of ingredients that launches a new team's careers. Even a failure can lead to great success down the road for individual developers or artists.