White Wolf Bought By Paradox

White Wolf, the company that originally brought us the World of Darkness RPG lines, has been owned by CCP (the Icelandic firm which produces Eve Online) for some years now. That company's plans originally involved A WoD MMO, but that go cancelled last year. As far as the tabletop RPGs went, these were licensed to Onyx Path, a company founded by ex-White Wolf staff, and also include Exalted, as well as the various iterations of the Vampire, Werewolf, etc. lines. Well, White Wolf just got bought by the Swedish company Paradox Interactive.

This means that Paradox - a computer games company, like CCP - now owns all those properties. There's no information on whether or not this will affect Onyx Path's tabletop RPG licenses, but Paradox - which calls this its "biggest investment ever" and cost "several tens of millions" of Swedish Krona (divide by 10 to get approximate US dollars) - is likely to pursue the video game angle. White Wolf is going to be operated as "an independent entity with a dedicated team."

Paradox's Shams Jorjani said "We’ve been huge fans of the White Wolf IPs for a long time especially World of Darkness/Vampire. Gonna be great to give it some fresh blood."

Also of interest is that Pradox's Fred Wester says that Vampire is "the world’s second best-selling role-playing and is special because half of all players are women." I'm not sure how true the first half of that sentence is -- Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder pretty much vie for the top spot.

“We’ve been negotiating with CCP for the last year on acquiring White Wolf Publishing and the underlying brands,” Paradox chief executive Fredrik Wester told GamesBeat. “They have sold 5.5 million books, and it’s still the second-best-selling RPG of all time behind Dungeons & Dragons. It adds a lot to Paradox portfolio.”

He also said, regarding licensing, "We’re going to start licensing out the brand again from the beginning. We’ll start with one World of Darkness. We’ll start, basically, from day one to unite the community under one flag."

Onyx Path development producer Rose Bailey said "We knew this deal was brewing, but can't talk about it right now. As far as I know, this includes all White Wolf games still owned by CCP, including both Worlds of Darkness and Exalted. It does not include White Wolf games now owned by other people, such as Scion, Trinity, and Scarred Lands." Onyx Path has been producing the tabletop RPG under license since CCP acquired White Wolf.

As far as existing licenses like Onyx Path's go, it looks like a period of reassessment is coming. Paradoz's Tobias Sjögren said "White Wolf will evaluate all standing relationships with the focus on continue to work with the ones that aligns with our vision of the brand, and also then find new partners to complement the story going forward." Shams Jorjani said "If it makes sense [Paradox] might publish some WW stuff. But our business will stay the same publishing great strategy, management and RPG games."

Onyx Path said the following: "We're touched that so many of you are concerned for us! Thanks for your faith in us. We'll have more to say when we can. Stay tuned."

Here's the official press release:

"STOCKHOLM - Oct. 29, 2015 - Paradox Interactive, a global games developer and publisher, today announced the acquisition of White Wolf Publishing from CCP Games in an all-cash deal. Now a subsidiary of Paradox Interactive, White Wolf Publishing is a licensing business that owns and manages intellectual properties including World of Darkness, Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Led by CEO Tobias Sjögren, former EVP of Business Development at Paradox, White Wolf Publishing will operate as an independent entity with a dedicated team.

White Wolf Publishing has a long history of producing gaming universes that span mediums, including tabletop and collectible card games, PC games and books. Paradox Interactive acquired all of White Wolf’s brands, and its new subsidiary will pursue development opportunities across relevant categories of games under the White Wolf Publishing name.

“Like Paradox’s games, White Wolf’s properties have dedicated, passionate communities. While there are similarities in spirit, White Wolf’s IPs have very different themes than Paradox’s titles, and deserve their own brand and team,” said Fredrik Wester, CEO and President of Paradox Interactive. “We have great respect for White Wolf’s gaming worlds and see big opportunities for their expansion in the future under our new subsidiary.”

“Over the last 20 years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with beloved studios like DICE and Paradox on the business management side of games, and as a developer earlier in my career. I look forward to bringing my experience to bear as we pursue new ways to interact with White Wolf’s universes,” said Tobias Sjögren, CEO of White Wolf Publishing. “The White Wolf IPs are well suited for all kinds of media and we see great potential to expand them in the future.”

"At CCP, we have great admiration for the White Wolf brands and communities, and it was extremely important to us that the acquiring company share the same respect and understanding,” said Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO of CCP Games. “With Paradox, we know we are leaving the brands in good hands."

 

[Umbran]

TSR for example apparently was making 40 million in revenue but losing about 3 million a year. The D&D fanbase was also a lot larger than what it is now. 2E died because TSR was useless not because the players were not there. To put it into context apparently TSR alone in the 90's (adjusted for inflation) was probably getting more revenue than the entire 2015 RPG industry by a factor of 2-1 or 3-1 (25 million 2015 vs 40 million adjusted for inflation mid 90's).

I think you're going to need citations for those numbers for folks to take them seriously.

 

[Umbran]

I would like to know what working the Mage botched to get Paradox buying up White Wolf.

 

[smiteworks]

Maybe they will relaunch a Kindred the Embraced series, but put it on HBO.

 

[Desalus]

Paradox can't do any worse than CCP did. I never would have imagined the outcome of CCP's acquisition of White Wolf, but seeing as how CCP seems to have a record for making poor business decisions I guess it isn't too surprising.

 

[Uchawi]

I have vampire exhaustion with movies, HBO, and RPGs, but I may be interested in a MMO, but it would have to break away from the current offerings on the market.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

This whole company is a mess, Im so sad for what has happened to this brand. Akin to a ship without a rudder...
Clearly the fact that its new owner is making claims such as second best selling rpg and that most of its players are women can only be prophetic of even sadder things to come

Will they sell it off again when they find out that it's not the second biggest selling rpg??

Maybe it's second best in Europe?

I see this as good news, though. Paradox is behind Pillars of Eternity, so as a publisher of computer games they focus on non-triple AAA titles that are still very good. We might actually see a decent CRPG out of this deal, and a return to form for White Wolf.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

I seriously doubt that is a question of hate, but rather economics. A $100 book Onyx sells you, you pay shipping, Onyx gets $100. You buy at retail for $100. The retailer gets $40, the distributor gets $20, Onyx pays shipping to the distributor and Onyx winds up with less then $40 per book. Then imagine what a hardcover HQ book costs to print these days and there's suddenly very little profit per book. Onyx already reaches a TON of people with the KS, if the were going to retail, they would need to sell at least thrice as many books then through direct sales. Is there such a large market these days? Wouldn't it be more profitable for Onyx to invest time/money in getting more people to buy direct? Just how many roleplayers buy retail these days compared to those who buy online?

I'd love to know the answer to that too. There's a robust local Camarilla group in town, and two factions, on oWoD and one nWoD but it looks like few of them buy anything from Onyx....all they play is old stuff, because most of them assume the game is dead. If it wasn't in print and in distribution these hardcore locals don't know about it. I showed one of them my copy of Strix Chronicles and he almost had a heart attack. At the very least Onyx could stand to find a better way to get word out that they exist.....but a retail presence would have gone a long way toward grabbing this invisible corner of the hardcore market.

 

[Fasckira]

Given that CCP couldn't make a Vampire MMO work despite their experience with EVE Online, and Paradox doesn't have MMO experience (they're much better known for games like Europa Universalis), I'm tempted to write this down as a huge vanity purchase until we hear more concrete details on what Paradox plans to do with the IP.

To be fair, CCP screwed up the Vampire MMO due to constantly taking staff off the project to work on other tasks as opposed to a lack of knowledge or experience. As for Paradox not having MMO experience, good point but then as far as Im aware they haven't stated they plan to continue the Vampire MMO (only that they've bought up all the assets which doesn't necessarily equate to a continuing of the project).

They've stated that they want to release many digital games and I'm keen to hear what they plan to do. Any game is better than no game, and it'll be interesting to see what direction a fresh set of eyes can take the product - if I dont like what they do, I can still replay Redemption and Bloodlines.

End of the day, they've spent a large chunk of money on securing the rights so its logical to assume that they've sat down and worked out a critical path and actually have a Plan. Hopefully.

 

[Umbran]

Paradox can't do any worse than CCP did.

Of course they could! They could completely muck up any software production, and *not* license out the RPG production to anyone, and aggressively hunt down those who do fan content for the RPG with copyright violation suits.

There's always a way it could be done worse.

 

[Zardnaar]

I think you're going to need citations for those numbers for folks to take them seriously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSR_(company)

Wikipedia might not be 100% accurate but ex TSR staffers have revealed they actually sold a lot of stuff, just at a loss being the problem.

The size of the RPGmarket in 2015 came from the ICV2 thing that was here on ENworld a few months ago. Sharon Appelcines book also details the final days of TSR IIRC. Additionally interviews with ex TSR staff such as Stan! are floating around the net. TSR novel lines apparently were selling well along with some of the game worlds.

Dragon Dice for example apparently sold 70k units, the problem being they ordered 1 million units (that is sets not individual dice). Boxed sets with lavish production values such as Planescape were being sold at a loss. There was also a survey IIRC from 1999 or so and they estimated there were 6 million D&D players in the world.

That is why D&D rebounded back so strong in 2000 with 3.0. The players were there, WoTC ran a better ship than TSR did. Ryan Dancey also gave the figures for 2E opening year sales (270k units in 1989) and 3.0 (300k the 1st month), which is in one of his threads here at ENworld. In an equivalent amount of time 2E seemed to outsell 1E. 2E in its dying days would still be one of the largest RPGs ever only beaten by a few editions of D&D.

Estimates of TSR print runs.

https://www.acaeum.com/library/printrun.html

So they may not be making up porikies that World of Darkness is the second biggest selling RPG of all time. I saw 5.5 million units shifted mentioned, last year Eric Mona revealed that Paizo had sold around 250k units (500k 3.0, 250-350k 3.5). IDK if that 5.5 million figure for white wolf is all books or all lines though the D&D/Pathinder figures are for PHB/core book.

Note I am not a fan of White Wolf but I remember at the time they were doing very well in the 90's. I have seen various estimates of how well they actually did(20-50% of the RPG market) and claims they briefly outsold AD&D (when TSR was in its death throes). THe novel lines were selling better (apparently) than AD&D but the novels were D&D based so IDK if thats fair counting them as RPG sales or not, but the idea is to give you an idea of how big TSR was. WotC also paid down TSRs debt after they bought them IIRC.

If you adjust some of the figures floating around for TSR in the 80's and 90's, TSR alone was an order of magnitude larger than the entire RPG market circa 2015 and its not just the golden age of 82/83. BECMI/AD&D are still the holy grail of D&D sales. For an individual unit BECMI has the D&D record (red boxed set), 1E or 2E probably has the record for most overall units sold as some 1E adventures broke the 100k units in total sales, OD&D would be the least popular D&D in terms of sales as it predated the D&D golden age.

If you want more information I can go and dig up interviews with ex TSR alumni, Gygax, Dancey etc if you want to watch them. Using this if the figures are accurate.

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

TSR 1982/83 64 million
TSR 1996 60 million
RPG market 2015 25 million

So if WHite Wolf did have a decent sized % of the RPG market in the early to mid 90's then yes they would be outselling Paizo/Pathfinder and could claim to be the 2nd biggest selling RPG of all time. They couldn't claim to be the 2nd biggest selling RPG in 2015 though.