Paizo will end its commercial license partnership with Archive of Nethys, a massive digital Pathfinder/Starfinder resource, on July 24th.
If you’ve played Pathfinder or Starfinder, odds are good you’re familiar with the Archive of Nethys (AoN). AoN is a massive digital repository of both Pathfinder and Starfinder rules, and according to statements from both Archive of Nethys and Paizo, the publishers of Pathfinder/Starfinder, AoN and Paizo will soon be ending the commercial licensed partnership.
What that means, exactly, seems to have caught the community of players by storm. But below you’ll find links to both statements on the developing situation.
Archive of Nethys and Paizo Issue Statements On Partnership
It started late yesterday when Archive of Nethys issued a statement on its Patreon detailing the end of its licensing agreement with Paizo, which came as “a bit of a surprise.” You can read the full statement right here. As AoN outlines, a big part of the change involves the use of art and early access:
A few weeks ago, Paizo sent us an e-mail stating that our partnership has been terminated, effective on July 24th.
We have been told the reason for this decision is that our website has not produced royalties for Paizo. While we cannot go into the full details of our license arrangement, the general details have been publicly known for many years. Paizo would send us early access book PDFs well ahead of release and provided us with their art assets to use on the site.
In exchange, our team of volunteers would make sure that the rules and content of the game made it onto the website in a timely and accurate manner. Lastly, if we generated enough profit, we would pay Paizo a royalty on that money, as licensed partners typically do. Unfortunately, as of the time of receiving this email, we had not made enough profit in a given month to generate any royalties for Paizo as per this arrangement.
AoN goes on to say that the decision comes as a surprise, considering that everyone who works on the website is an unpaid volunteer and that it believes the real value it had was in giving people easy access to the rules, for free, to bring more people into the fold.
This will still be true after the 24th, as AoN points out, though the website won’t be able to display the art or have as early access to the books/adventure paths, having to get them “the standard way.”
“With all of this said, the Archives of Nethys will continue to support this community. Paizo has even encouraged us to do so under the Community Use Policy (CUP) instead of our partnership license. This will, however, necessitate some changes going forward.”
Said changes include taking down artwork not compliant with the Community Use Policy, (most of it), as well as taking down the original Paizo PRD and again, a slower access to digital rules.
At the end of the day, Pathfinder’s rules are still available for free. On AoN and elsewhere, thanks to the ORC license.
Paizo Responds
Paizo points this out in a statement issued in response, asserting that Archive of Nethys will “continue offering the same rules access as it does today under the Community Use Policy.”
Eight years ago, we entered into a licensing relationship with AoN. The idea was simple: Archives of Nethys would receive early access to Paizo products and exclusive access to artwork that wasn’t available under the Community Use Policy, and in return, Paizo would receive royalties generated through that expanded use to cover the costs of this special relationship. It’s true that those royalties never materialized, but that wasn’t the sole reason we decided to end the license.
Licenses take resources to manage—lawyers to review and follow up on contracts, finance employees to review and enter royalty statements, and licensing staff to provide assets and other support. Those resources must be balanced against other business demands.
The use of Paizo artwork on the web also created ongoing confusion about what assets are allowed under the Community Use Policy. Archives placed a legal notice explaining that they had a license to use artwork and other elements, but other sites routinely copied those assets and used them for themselves. That created additional work for our legal and licensing teams to draft DMCA and cease‑and‑desist notices.
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That last part feels a little odd to me, because Pathfinder artwork could be copied from anywhere it’s hosted. Though the crux of it is true, the artwork and maps and such are often one of the few things that can (and therefore must) be protected by copyright. Additionally, Paizo asserts that it offered a “marketing agreement” to AoN to try and dampen the impact, but that “those conversations were not concluded before they chose to publish their notice.”
Either way, it puts both entities in a difficult spot. Especially since so much of Paizo’s future is in transition at the moment, following the fallout from the Diamond/Alliance bankruptcy proceedings. It goes to show how the widespread consequences from that case continue to be. Paizo certainly isn’t the only publisher seeking to get their own products out from under a lien they have nothing to do with.
The situation is still developing, so check back for updates as more details emerge.
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