Paizo Publishing announced Wednesday that it is laying off 12 employees and scaling back its Organized Play programs, the direct result of losing nearly $2 million in 2025 to the ongoing fallout from Diamond Comics’ bankruptcy.
My grief over their predicament is mostly limited by the contempt Paizo has for people like me. Just as well they were never oppressed by any of my evil dollars going into their coffers.
"The second edition Remaster in 2023 stripped out the alignment system that had been a cornerstone of classic fantasy RPG design since Gary Gygax. The reasons given were mechanical. The subtext was not hard to read."
They got rid of alignment? I figured they'd give a mechanical reason for such a decision, but what is the subtext?
To move away from the OGL, which dictated a lot of the decisions on the 2e remaster, such as removing drow (replaced with lizardfolk). The 2e remaster refers to them as holy, unholy, or neutral.
Of course, this would require reading the material or playing the game, something Jon del LARP didnt do.
You know it's not surprising that the person whose handle is Obama gaming is a leftist. It's not surprising that he can't tell that the rejection of their core audience in favor of wokeism had already diminished them as a company and they were on their way to going out of business and the bankruptcy of diamond accelerated that.
I don't like woke and I'm happy to see them go broke but it's not clear to me from this the two are connected. They used Diamond Distributors, which got hurt by COVID and then lost DC, Marvel, and IDW in rapid succession.
I'm in some long-running games but we are likely to switch to different systems when done.
It's crazy - when Hasbro/WotC screwed everyone with forcing them onto D&D Beyond there was a mass exodus to Pathfinder 2. People were going into their Friendly Local Gaming Store and buying $300+ of books at a time to get into it and have a fun time.
The Diamond thing is not their fault, but how did they squander that massive goodwill?
Diamond's collapse and Paizo's turn to woke aren't really related.
Diamond wasn't an 800 pound gorilla squatting on US distribution channels it WAS the distribution channel. Everybody used them because there wasn't really an alternative.
Diamond screwed themselves by abusing that position for decades and then shutting everything down because "muh COVID". Alternatives were forced on the industry at that point.
Where Paizo erred was not jumping ship like WotC, Marvel, and DC did.
One could argue that a healthier, less woke Paizo would have had the resources to either jump ship early too or better weather the storm. That is too much of an extrapolation for me and I think it's searching for reasons to dunk on wokeness. (There are plenty enough I say, focus on those.)
Too many good people and good companies have been seriously impacted by the Diamond collapse and the, in my opinion, illegal theft of their consignment products. The entire Internet went crazy over 200k in stolen Lego consignments (Bricks and Minifigs controversy), but there was nowhere near that outrage when JPMorgan, the bank holding Diamond's debt, illegally stole tens of millions in consignment products.
Because Jon, and Fandom Pulse in general, is only an outlet to look at anything bad happening to any publisher/dev/writer/insert-whatever and saying it's because of woke. No serious or genuine analysis.
You can do a better job yourself of just watching anything happen on the news, and say "oh man, that's because they went woke" and do 95% of what FP does.
My comment was disagreeing with the site's content creators in a respectful and informed manner.
I don't always agree 100% with what Jon and his writers post, but, for the must part, I generally enjoy their articles and find their points interesting to consider. I'll add my perspective and thoughts when they bring something to the table, or I'll throw in some counterpoints where needed.
Why exactly are you here other than to insult the site, it's operator, and it's users? If you don't like the content, go away.
May I suggest board game geek as an alternative? It is one of the most suffocatingly moderated sites on the entire Internet. You can talk about almost anything there, not just board games. And you'll never have to engage with a conflicting thought. The moderators saw to that a long time ago.
It’s not an insult, it’s just the truth, even if I’m being crass about it.
Jon is a comic book guy. The same thing that’s happening to paizo re: inventory is also happening to other comic book publishers that use diamond for distribution, like dynamite. Is this something he’s gonna write about, or something he mentions in his piece? Absolutely not. This is fine if he wants FP to be run as a blog, but not if he pretends it’s the “hardest hitting pop culture entertainment journalism”. Like you mentioned, this story has more in common with legos & minifigs and is bigger than any publisher’s product line.
As to why I’m here: this post popped up in my feed. As someone who’s familiar with supply chain management and Paizo, I wanted to see if the title was clickbait segueing into a deeper analysis of the situation. To my surprise, the hardest hitting pop culture entertainment journalism dedicates less than a line to Diamond Publishing while parroting complaints about Woke Paizo that are mostly irrelevant. After browsing some of FP’s other posts, yeah, I did find that most of it is misdirection with a near copy-paste model.
As for your last comment: isn’t that what I’m doing? Engaging with the piece? Call me crass or rude, but I’m not saying he should be shut down or clutching my pearls. I’m saying he’s a hack, because from what I’ve seen he basically writes the same thing, and I’m saying he’s a poser, because his analysis is very surface level.
this has got to be the laziest analysis ever on the situation. Instead of delving into the real challenges of logistics and distribution, it’s a bunch of bullshit about Paizo betting on wokeness (which it has for what, 10+years? But NOW it’s when it’s really backfiring, guys!). Paizo could’ve been selling material like hot cakes and it wouldn’t have mattered because all of the material was going to be held up in diamond’s inventory anyway.
Obviously, this is all to cover up the fact that TTRPG devs and publishers that aren’t WOTC don’t have an efficient way of reaching retailers. Jon del arroz loves big business, finance and tech, and wouldn’t dare critique any of them. Kind of guy to complain about everything being soulless and owned by one corporation while also only supporting said corporation
The structural read is that when you don't have logistics, you promote wokeness to shame people into buying your product. Any calorie of energy spent on they/them wheelchairs could have been spent, oh I dunno, making a really good mobile app or a non gay version of Critical Role.
If you don’t have logistics you can’t sell. How can anyone be shamed into buying product if you can’t ship your stock? This is nearly the same thing as the bricks and minifigs scandal. Product quality or even sales aren’t a part of the equation.
Irrelevant. Paizo, like many other TTRPG publishers, doesn’t have the scale to sustain physical self-distribution. Diamond comics was the entity they partnered with, and it’s the entity that went bust. Paizo leadership is not a part of this loop.
You know what they say: Get Woke, Go Broke.
I look forward to hearing about Paizo's impending implosion. They get what they asked for..... good and hard.
My grief over their predicament is mostly limited by the contempt Paizo has for people like me. Just as well they were never oppressed by any of my evil dollars going into their coffers.
"The second edition Remaster in 2023 stripped out the alignment system that had been a cornerstone of classic fantasy RPG design since Gary Gygax. The reasons given were mechanical. The subtext was not hard to read."
They got rid of alignment? I figured they'd give a mechanical reason for such a decision, but what is the subtext?
To move away from the OGL, which dictated a lot of the decisions on the 2e remaster, such as removing drow (replaced with lizardfolk). The 2e remaster refers to them as holy, unholy, or neutral.
Of course, this would require reading the material or playing the game, something Jon del LARP didnt do.
You know it's not surprising that the person whose handle is Obama gaming is a leftist. It's not surprising that he can't tell that the rejection of their core audience in favor of wokeism had already diminished them as a company and they were on their way to going out of business and the bankruptcy of diamond accelerated that.
Ha ha on Paizo.
Zero sympathy for their money troubles.
In fact, I'm "celebrating."
I don't like woke and I'm happy to see them go broke but it's not clear to me from this the two are connected. They used Diamond Distributors, which got hurt by COVID and then lost DC, Marvel, and IDW in rapid succession.
I'm in some long-running games but we are likely to switch to different systems when done.
It's crazy - when Hasbro/WotC screwed everyone with forcing them onto D&D Beyond there was a mass exodus to Pathfinder 2. People were going into their Friendly Local Gaming Store and buying $300+ of books at a time to get into it and have a fun time.
The Diamond thing is not their fault, but how did they squander that massive goodwill?
Diamond's collapse and Paizo's turn to woke aren't really related.
Diamond wasn't an 800 pound gorilla squatting on US distribution channels it WAS the distribution channel. Everybody used them because there wasn't really an alternative.
Diamond screwed themselves by abusing that position for decades and then shutting everything down because "muh COVID". Alternatives were forced on the industry at that point.
Where Paizo erred was not jumping ship like WotC, Marvel, and DC did.
One could argue that a healthier, less woke Paizo would have had the resources to either jump ship early too or better weather the storm. That is too much of an extrapolation for me and I think it's searching for reasons to dunk on wokeness. (There are plenty enough I say, focus on those.)
Too many good people and good companies have been seriously impacted by the Diamond collapse and the, in my opinion, illegal theft of their consignment products. The entire Internet went crazy over 200k in stolen Lego consignments (Bricks and Minifigs controversy), but there was nowhere near that outrage when JPMorgan, the bank holding Diamond's debt, illegally stole tens of millions in consignment products.
Funny the difference there.
Because Jon, and Fandom Pulse in general, is only an outlet to look at anything bad happening to any publisher/dev/writer/insert-whatever and saying it's because of woke. No serious or genuine analysis.
You can do a better job yourself of just watching anything happen on the news, and say "oh man, that's because they went woke" and do 95% of what FP does.
Look, you see what my comment was doing?
My comment was disagreeing with the site's content creators in a respectful and informed manner.
I don't always agree 100% with what Jon and his writers post, but, for the must part, I generally enjoy their articles and find their points interesting to consider. I'll add my perspective and thoughts when they bring something to the table, or I'll throw in some counterpoints where needed.
Why exactly are you here other than to insult the site, it's operator, and it's users? If you don't like the content, go away.
May I suggest board game geek as an alternative? It is one of the most suffocatingly moderated sites on the entire Internet. You can talk about almost anything there, not just board games. And you'll never have to engage with a conflicting thought. The moderators saw to that a long time ago.
It’s not an insult, it’s just the truth, even if I’m being crass about it.
Jon is a comic book guy. The same thing that’s happening to paizo re: inventory is also happening to other comic book publishers that use diamond for distribution, like dynamite. Is this something he’s gonna write about, or something he mentions in his piece? Absolutely not. This is fine if he wants FP to be run as a blog, but not if he pretends it’s the “hardest hitting pop culture entertainment journalism”. Like you mentioned, this story has more in common with legos & minifigs and is bigger than any publisher’s product line.
As to why I’m here: this post popped up in my feed. As someone who’s familiar with supply chain management and Paizo, I wanted to see if the title was clickbait segueing into a deeper analysis of the situation. To my surprise, the hardest hitting pop culture entertainment journalism dedicates less than a line to Diamond Publishing while parroting complaints about Woke Paizo that are mostly irrelevant. After browsing some of FP’s other posts, yeah, I did find that most of it is misdirection with a near copy-paste model.
As for your last comment: isn’t that what I’m doing? Engaging with the piece? Call me crass or rude, but I’m not saying he should be shut down or clutching my pearls. I’m saying he’s a hack, because from what I’ve seen he basically writes the same thing, and I’m saying he’s a poser, because his analysis is very surface level.
it is a well known fact that if paizo pandered to the chuds they would be thriving like TSR and their distributor wouldn’t have croaked
this has got to be the laziest analysis ever on the situation. Instead of delving into the real challenges of logistics and distribution, it’s a bunch of bullshit about Paizo betting on wokeness (which it has for what, 10+years? But NOW it’s when it’s really backfiring, guys!). Paizo could’ve been selling material like hot cakes and it wouldn’t have mattered because all of the material was going to be held up in diamond’s inventory anyway.
Obviously, this is all to cover up the fact that TTRPG devs and publishers that aren’t WOTC don’t have an efficient way of reaching retailers. Jon del arroz loves big business, finance and tech, and wouldn’t dare critique any of them. Kind of guy to complain about everything being soulless and owned by one corporation while also only supporting said corporation
The structural read is that when you don't have logistics, you promote wokeness to shame people into buying your product. Any calorie of energy spent on they/them wheelchairs could have been spent, oh I dunno, making a really good mobile app or a non gay version of Critical Role.
If you don’t have logistics you can’t sell. How can anyone be shamed into buying product if you can’t ship your stock? This is nearly the same thing as the bricks and minifigs scandal. Product quality or even sales aren’t a part of the equation.
"If you don’t have logistics you can’t sell"
Yes, that's rather the punchline of the last few decades. There's an amusing comic about it:
https://stonetoss.com/comic/burger-kang/
Irrelevant. Paizo, like many other TTRPG publishers, doesn’t have the scale to sustain physical self-distribution. Diamond comics was the entity they partnered with, and it’s the entity that went bust. Paizo leadership is not a part of this loop.
All of your comments have been irrelevant and pointless.