Let's talk about the Paizo and Archives of Nethys controversy

[00:00:00]Hi, it's Ronald, the rules lawyer. Much of the Pathfinder and Starfinder online community is very concerned right now because of Piso's decision to terminate its 8-year partnership with the volunteers behind Archives of Nethus, the website that has been the official free repository for the systems rules online.

[00:00:21]Okay, here comes my cat Megan. Today I basically give an overview of the situation, give editorial commentary, and hopefully this video comes out before there's an expected major update this week or next. And hopefully that update includes a resolution. But first, I want to give a shout out to the workers at Wizards of the Coast, the ones behind Magic the Gathering Arena.

[00:00:42]On June 23rd, they had an election and successfully unionized over and against Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast resistance. We as a tabletop RPG community should definitely 100% support the effort of these workers and support all efforts to spread this union across all of Wizards of the Coast. And I'm mad that I didn't get ahead of this the first time around. First, the usual introduction. I am Ronald, the rules lawyer. I'm a lawyer who runs tabletop role playing games. My preferred systems are Pathfinder and Starfinder 2e. Please support my Patreon. I don't make money as an attorney. To see why, look at the video whose thumbnail is on the screen.

[00:01:19]Supporting my Patreon gives you adfree early access to most of my videos and exclusive content. Here's an outline of what I'll cover in this video, and there will be timestamps. What is Archives of Nethus? What did the partnership between them and Piso entail? What just happened recently? What are people upset about in the community? Piso's explanation for this decision, other possible reasons for their decision, an assessment of Archives of Nethis recent actions, and what's next. I tried to do my research for this video. I looked at all of the links posted in the Pathfinder 2 subreddits mega thread on this topic, including all the most important statements by Piso and Archives of Nethis, including the latter's recent video and FAQ. and I read over 700 messages on the piso.com message boards on this topic. I make this video to inform the community and also to help ensure a healthy future for Piso and the games we love. Now, what is the Archives of Nethis? It's a reference for all of the rules for Pathfinder and Starfinder, both their first and second editions.

[00:02:29]These are very crunchy systems with lots of rules, classes, spells, monsters, and magic items. And so there's a lot of work involved in keeping these online references up to date. For Pathfinder 2e, you get to see all of the ancestries, archetypes, backgrounds, classes, skills, and companions, and all of the associated feats. And they are very easy to find and sort and filter through their robust database. It's quite well done and I made a video on this channel link in the description going over why I find it useful, including specific use cases and explaining how to use its search and filter features. When a new book comes out on the street date when it goes officially live, pretty much all of the crunchy content that's in it shows up on this website. If not on launch day, then very soon after on July 30th when the new book Impossible Magic drops, we're likely going to see then or soon after the new necromancer and runesmith classes and remasters of the magazine summoner. It's lean and it's fast. And in pretty much every session I run of Pathfinder 2e, I use Foundry VTT. My players and I use this website multiple times and I often have multiple windows out simultaneously that include the monster stat blocks that I'm running in a fight. Everything is hyperl. I can click to see a description of that universal monster ability or spell in an instant. There's a ton of use cases for this website and I'm sure people will expand on what I've said in the comments. One more is that if you want to choose an ancestry for your new character, there's this website that has artwork of all of the ancestorries available in the game. And if you don't want to see the artwork, you can easily change the view so that it's in table form like this. And meanwhile, Archives of Nethus is done entirely by volunteer work. There's about a dozen people who apparently are very passionate fans and players of the game who have day jobs and do this website in their off time.

[00:04:28]Now, what did the partnership between Piso and Archives of Nethus entail?

[00:04:32]Before I go on, I want to make clear what it does not entail, what would be true even without this partnership? All of the rules content on Archives of Nephus, the classes, the feats, the monster stat blocks, the spells, what have you, is released to the public for free. So legally, Piso should not be able to force Archives of Nethis or anybody to take down this rules content from the internet or force them to pay a fee to keep it up because they're published either under Wizards of the Coast's OGL license or since the remaster under Piso's ORC license and that license is unambiguously irrevocable. Leading up to the launch of Pathfinder second edition in 2018, Piso and Archives of Nethis entered into this partnership. Here is their blog announcing it from the time. By the way, legally, Archives of Nethis is not a company, but is maintained by Rosewinds LLC, which is owned by the website's founder and developer, Blake Davis. This partnership made Archives of Nethis the official repository for Piso's game rules. Now, Archives of Methodists already existed before this partnership and had been a reference for Pathfinder and Starfinder first edition. But this partnership entailed various things. The most important of which I believe are these three things. First, Piso's public reference document, its repository that it had been maintaining of its Pathfinder first edition rules migrated from Piso server to archives of Nethsis server. Second, Piso would now send PDFs of their soon tobe released books much earlier to the volunteers at Archives of Nethus, perhaps months earlier. I don't know what the time frame is, so that they could do the work of putting all of the rules content on their website so that it would be ready to launch on launch day on the street date. And additionally, Archives of Nethis would be allowed to post much of the artwork from Piso's books onto their website.

[00:06:32]artwork that is not released to the public under either the OGL or the ORC license. It was seen then and is widely seen now by many as a win-win situation for both parties. For Piso, they no longer had to do the labor of maintaining a PRD. Archives of Nethis would be doing that now for the new addition of their game. And as the years passed, the volunteers at Archives of Nath would add more functionality to the website, which I would argue made Pathfinder a better game, an easier one for GMs to prepare and easier to play at the table. Features such as multiple ways you can search through the spells in the system. Here they are organized by spell rank or by magic tradition.

[00:07:14]Here are the arcane spells. or you can view them in table form and filter them by traits, what saving throw they called for, search for keywords in them, pretty much anything you can think of. I think if you're a game master and want to look for giants, you can type giant in the search bar and see that giant animals come up. But you can actually get to the creature family giant and then pull up this screen. And here it lists all the giants and immediately tells you what level each one is. and you can hover over each one to preview their description and stat block and see their artwork without having to click through.

[00:07:49]The website with its improving functionality has also been free promotion for Piso. Particularly in light of Hasbro and Watsi's increasingly scandalous practices, Piso's decision to put out its rules for free and partner with these volunteers has attracted a lot of new players to these games and fostered community goodwill. I would say that for players of Pathfinder and Starfinder who have friends playing Dungeons and Dragons, the main talking points to convince them to try it out is that all of the rules are free for players and game masters on Archives of Nethis. And there are character builders out there that let you build characters for free. And for the most widely used one, Pathbuilder, you get the vast majority of options for free and get all the options for a onetime fee. It's fair to say that there are many Pathfinder and Starfinder players now who would not have become such players, but for the existence of these tools, many of whom would then buy books and PDFs because of the advantages those formats bring. And from what I've read on the message boards, there are many people who made these purchases largely out of goodwill because they wanted to pay back the company that had put out these rules for free and allowed these tools to be available. Meanwhile, what do the people at Archives of Nethascane? Honestly, not much. There actually was um some concern at the time from people who thought that Blake Davis should be paid for his work, and this was his response. I apologize.

[00:09:14]I couldn't find a higher quality uh screenshot of this. He made clear that he wasn't looking for personal income or salary or anything of the kind doing this. He had been using ad revenue and his Patreon to defay the costs of the servers and I don't know what other costs are involved with maintaining a website but definitely the server the hosting and by being the official repository and the high profile that provides that would generate more traffic to archive which would mean more ad revenue and more potential Patreon supporters. Andy says he now gets faster support from Piso with regards to early access books, quick answers to pfs and arata issues and more. Meanwhile, the partnership had a provision that if Archives of Nethus made a certain amount of revenue that Piso would get royalties. It never made royalties, and Piso said that in their recent blog post. Archives of Nethus has been pretty transparent to Piso and the community that they're not interested in making this a money-making venture, and that all the content and features of the website, they basically want all of it to be available to the entire community, none of it behind a payw wall. So, the impression I get of the Archives and Methodists team is that they're kind of like super fans, people who are happy to contribute to the community. Akin to the volunteers who support Pathfinder second edition on Foundry VTT and the creator of Pathbuilder. He does a lot of work going beyond I think what he earns. Now, what happened recently? Let's go over it. First, I'll provide some important background. Piso is presently in lean financial times with the bankruptcy of Diamond Comics, which had been the sole exclusive distributor of their physical books. Diamond and its creditors seized Piso's stock that was sitting in Diamond warehouses, meaning Piso has lost millions of dollars of sales that they had been relying on. Now, there's a legal battle in the courts along with the many other companies who were screwed like Piso was, but that's going to take a long time. So, Piso needs to dramatically cut costs and increase revenue somehow. And this was the June 8th announcement of them laying off 12 employees. And also, Piso has faced other challenges in the last several years, not least of which was the pandemic and the increase in printing and shipping costs, as well as a shift in the hobby towards more digital gaming. These have posed challenges as well. But most immediately, the diamond bankruptcy is what much of the community has speculated is the immediate cause behind the decision to end the partnership because this decision is uncharacteristic of Piso and its history. Now, why exactly this bankruptcy is prompting Piso to make this decision is unclear. I'll address possible reasons later, but first, let's go over the recent timeline. After my research, this is my best attempt to portray accurately what has happened. I will give the caveat that I rely mostly on what Archives of Nethus has reported because they generally give more details and none of what they have said has been contradicted by Piso as of today. One of the terms of this partnership is that Piso could end it at any time, but that they had to give Archives of Nethis 1 month's notice before doing so. On June 24th, Piso CEO Jim Butler, and here are their pictures, he sent an email to I'm just going to call it AON. It's easier.

[00:12:38]AON's founder Blake Davis saying that the partnership would end on July 24th, 30 days later. Jim Butler's initial email did not give a reason for why Piso was making this decision. But in a later email that day, he said that the reason for this was that Archives of Matis was not generating royalties for Piso. Blake Davis reports that Piso had never raised this concern before. And I'm about to show a clip from their recent video.

[00:13:05]>> We had been partnered for eight years and up until I received that email, I had no awareness that this was coming, that they had this on the plan. Uh were there any communications regarding license prior determination? No. Uh this June 24th was the first I heard of it.

[00:13:22]Apparently, Piso had not raised any concern with Archives and Nethis that the partnership wasn't working for them before this email. So, nothing about the cost of administering the license, such as sending out cease and desist notices to people who repost artwork from Archives of Nethus, which Piso would say to the community later on. So, naturally, Piso had never talked to Archives of Nethus about how to address whatever concerns it had, such as raising revenue, watermarking artwork.

[00:13:50]That had not happened. Also, according to Blake Davis, Jim Butler was interested in what Blake Davis called a promotional agreement. But from what has been shared about that, what was floated were ideas to ease the transition for archives of Nethis, but not talk about maintaining the partnership. Again, the only offer that I can say was floated our way was the possibility of making it easier for us Dream of Art, which again was not a difficulty, or potentially giving us uh free PDFs, copying our PDFs on subscription date. So, still not early, but same time as other subscribers. Again, that wasn't really enjoyed by my team. most of them are already subscribers and they like maintaining their own subscription outside of any arrangements like this.

[00:14:41]The kind of desire to keep this as a a less formal arrangement also was a little bit spooky. So we so far have not agreed to anything though we did tell Piso that we are open to maybe a call, video chat, something with myself and some other senior members of the team to see if we can agree on something that will help both our sides out. Piso also said that the archives would have a six-month grace period after July 24th to take down content. A week passed and Blake Davis sent an email on July 1st to follow up. He told Jim Butler that he wanted to make an announcement to the community that the partnership was ending before July 24th. He needed answers to questions, some of which he had already raised a week earlier, about what exactly could still stay up on the archives. For example, and this is me filling in the blanks, gallerian specific terminology such as names and descriptions of deities. If you go on archives of Nethis now, there are quite extensive writeups about gallerian deities and NPCs from adventure paths.

[00:15:45]Jim Butler responded that he was out that week and that they could talk the following week about how to make the required removals easier. That's how Blake Davis describes what he said on Archives of Nethus. However, two weeks passed and Jim Butler did not get back to him. He and the AON team wanted to make their announcement. On Tuesday, July 14th, he emailed Jim Butler again sharing some bullet points that they plan to make in a public post. And he did this 2 or 3 hours before making that public post. And here is that post and there's a link in the description, but basically it announced that the partnership was ending and that much of the artwork would go down on July 24th and they would no longer be able to get PDFs early and get the rules out on launch day in the future. Otherwise, the archive still would exist and still continue. And this post openly disagreed with Piso's decision. It said, quote, "We have been told the reason for this decision is that our website has not produced royalties for Piso." They countered that the archives had been attracting people to these games and had been a useful tool. It had been a main talking point to get people interested in these games. It said, quote, "We've always believed that attempting to monetize the site more aggressively would result in less users and that our real value to Piso was in the traffic and business we sent their way." While the partnership was over and they were complying, they encouraged people to express their views on this decision to Piso in a polite manner, directing people to Piso's message boards and their email. Side note, they did not take advantage of the six-month grace period offered by Piso. As Blake Davis says in his recent video, removing the artwork doesn't take much time. He says they wanted to avoid questions that would come up. And this is me filling in the blanks. I believe that refers to with Impossible Magic coming out July 30 after the termination of the partnership, they probably are not able to put up artwork from that book as well as all other new books during the six-month grace period. Blake Davis said that he and his team wanted to quote rip off the band-aid. The next day, Jim Butler posted this in Piso's official blog. It begins with thanking the team at Archives of Nethis for their work and it also gives reasons for why Piso ended the partnership. The meat of it is on the screen starting here. They explain the idea of the partnership and that it included Piso would receive royalties generated through the website's expanded use of Piso content 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. And it talks about having to enforce the use of artwork. 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 seize and desist notices.

[00:18:52]I will share my thoughts later on these reasons, but let's finish the timeline.

[00:18:56]There's a lot of community outcry after the archives announcement and Jim Butler's response. At the end of the business day on Friday, Jim Butler made the following post on the PISO message boards. He said that he'd been reading many posts and that quote, "I hear you."

[00:19:11]and he says that our conversations with archives of Natis are still ongoing and we're planning to meet next week. If we're able to find a path forward together, we'll share that update jointly so everyone gets the full picture at the same time. All right, so what are people upset about? First, what would be lost in Archives of Nethus?

[00:19:32]Because the team will no longer be getting books significantly earlier, there will be a significant delay, I don't know how much exactly, after the street date of a book before that content is available on the archives.

[00:19:45]Next, much of the artwork will go down.

[00:19:48]Now, I admit my initial reaction to this was that it wasn't that big a deal. My main use for archives with nothing is to find rules content quickly. But after seeing many comments on the message boards, I now see what some people are saying. For someone who's trying to create a new character, seeing artwork of ancestries and of classes helps narrow down their choices very quickly and also inspires new ideas. Also, artwork helps promote the game. Someone seeing this artwork of Venovian ancestry for Starfinder will get instantly an idea well one what this ancestry is like but also just the general flavor and feel of Starfinder's default campaign setting. Artwork is also useful for game masters. On the archives own FAQ they give the example of Treerazer, a unique nent demon lord in the Pathfinder campaign setting. Here's the artwork for it. Pretty cool. But if you look at the descriptive text for it, there is zero language describing what it looks like.

[00:20:52]Artwork is something that you can show players and it informs the GM as to well how they would want to physically describe it and also it hints at its behavior, their personality. Now, it's important to note here that rules content being available on day one and artwork are not lost to us if this partnership ends because these things exist on Demilane, which hosts Pathfinder Nexus, which has the rules there for free as well, but charges for separate books if you want to use the content in them for its tools, including its character builder. So far, we haven't heard any news of Piso ending giving early access to books so that Nexus can have the rules up on launch day or ending their ability to put up artwork. However, as for finding rules on Nexus, I'll report what I've read online. I've seen comments saying that it's harder to navigate than Archives of Nethus. There's also a concern that Gallerian specific names will have to be scrubbed off of Archives of Nethus after this partnership ends. things like this archetype called last wall sentry which refers to the knights of last wall in the campaign setting. If you're trying to choose this archetype on pathbuilder, I believe it's simply called sentry.

[00:22:10]Well, this is unaffected by the end of the partnership. And the difference between archives of nethys and path builder is that pathbuilder charges a fee for full access to its features. The community use policy allows archives of Nethus to have this gallerian specific name because it doesn't charge for access to it or any particular use of it. Another concern is that the very popular virtual tabletop Foundry will this affect the ability to use new options from new books on launch day.

[00:22:42]The volunteers at Foundry are almost certainly getting the PDFs, getting the rules content much earlier than street date because we're normally able to use them immediately on the VTT. The concern is raised that if this can happen to archives of Nethus, might this eventually happen to the foundry volunteers and do we have an ironclad assurance that this won't? Well, Andrew White, Piso's digital projects manager, posted this on Blue Sky assuring people that that won't happen. He says that the systems for Foundry VTT are not and will not be affected by the end of the Piso AON partnership. That's good to see and I imagine there's further assurance by the fact that Piso does have a partnership with Foundry and sells premium modules through Foundry and is getting royalties from that. Still, the fact that Andrew White felt like he had to make the statement speaks to how shaken the community's confidence has been in Piso's commitment to volunteers being able to develop tools. So that's the sum total of what is specifically lost and not lost with the ending of this partnership. And admittedly, these changes are not world ending in the grand scheme of things. Some of the early reaction and anger to the news uh was from people thinking that Archives of Nethis as a whole would go down, but that's not true. When the next book is launched that is delayed as a result of them not having early access, we as players and GMs will still have access to 95% of the rules content and will get the remaining 5% in due time. Archives of Nethus would return to what it was before the partnership, an independent website run by volunteers that has the rules, one that has the greater functionality due to the higher profile and attraction of more volunteer labor that the partnership fostered for 8 years. Before this partnership, Piso was praiseworthy in relation to other companies, especially Wizards of the Coast, in putting out all of its rules for free. And that would still be true after the end of this partnership. But people's concerns are not limited to what specifically is lost with the ending of this partnership. And that's what I'll now cover. First is that it just plain hurts the people on the archives and that this volunteer team.

[00:24:58]They are basically Pathfinder and Starfinder super fans who have given likely thousands of hours of volunteer labor to make these better games. I encourage anyone who is critical of Archives of Natsis' recent actions, and I'll address those criticisms soon, to look at Blake Davis's video that he put out recently. It's done in a single take, and it's clear throughout that he and the rest of the team are obviously upset by this. After they put in a huge amount of work on this website, here is Piso's CEO unceremoniously and without warning and initially without explanation saying it was over and that fell shortly here from their lawyer.

[00:25:38]>> I replied back about I think 30 less than 30 minutes or so later um expressing my disappointment. I'm I'm not going to lie. Uh despite the amount of hair follicles on my face, I'm capable of a good weep. And it did bring a bit of a tear to my eye to to hear the news. It was like being surprised uh by someone breaking up with us, but you know, not in so romantic terms. We had been partnered for 8 years. And up until I received that email, I had no awareness that this was coming. And the reason that Jim Butler would give later that day that Piso was not getting royalties for them was first of all cold-hearted, but also didn't make much sense. It was out of sync with a partnership that that they had had amicably for 8 years previously that had produced no royalties at all. There had been no effort to communicate with AON before this. No saying we are having some issues with this partnership that are caused by it and we want to see if we can solve these problems together.

[00:26:43]and whether we can negotiate something new. They waited until the very last day they could legally get away with under the contract one month before terminating the relationship to tell them it was over. And that's an appalling way to treat the people who have been among the most contributing members of the Pathfinder and Starfinder community. Although the archives stay up and we have much of the same usefulness they provide to the community now, I have to think that this damages the enthusiasm with which the people at AON do their work. The last several years under the partnership have seen lots of new features added to the website, constant improvements. When Piso did the remaster of Pathfinder 2e, there would now be two versions of many of the same rules and classes and spells throughout the entire system. The AON team put in untold hours doing the massive work of making both rule sets available online and still keep the website sleek and easy to navigate back and forth. I will not be surprised and I will not disparrage the AON team one bit if the work of the future is done less enthusiastically, less quickly and with less sacrifice. Or if they reduce their commitments or quit due to real life obligations, quit making Pathfinder a better game for free because of this.

[00:28:06]And this dramatizes how important it is for this situation to be rectified. for it seems to go against the core of what has made Piso relatively unique as a company and has been important to its success. Sure, Piso puts out great rules for its games, but there are other great rule sets out there. Piso has thrived and made money based on the tremendous amount of goodwill it has built up over the past few decades. That list is long and storied. Being screwed over by Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast in losing Dragon and Dungeon magazines and going out on their own and publishing their own system that kept alive third edition Dn D in the face of many people not being happy with fourth edition.

[00:28:49]putting out all of their rules for free under the open gaming license, unlike Hasbro, promoting progressive values, voluntarily recognizing their own union, spearheading and funding the development of the ORC license in response to the OGL scandal, basically being the anti-Watsi.

[00:29:07]The people at Archais are part of a essential volunteer ecosystem that includes the people over at Foundry VTT and the guy who makes Pathbuilder who is underpaid for what he does as well as his many others in making Pathfinder and Starfinder easier to use and better games. Piso's partnership with Archives of Nethus said, "We Piso value and support this community and ending it in the manner that they did communicates well that they don't." And so, particularly for the most invested, involved members of the Pathfinder and Starfinder community who have historically been supporters and real fans like me of Piso over the years.

[00:29:50]This is more about than what specifically is changing on Archives of Nethus. It's shaking our confidence in the present Piso leadership. On the message boards, there are a number of long articulate posts from people who had supported Piso over the years, who had spent lots of money, had stumped Pathfinder and Starfinder to their friends, who had used the archives as a main talking point to convince people to play the game, who now are saying that they couldn't see themselves supporting the company anymore or doing so nearly as enthusiastically. And this decision by Piso's leadership comes on the heels of other poorly received decisions in the last few years. Now, I won't list them all, and I have yet to investigate them all, but one that stood out to me was their decision in 2024 to without any prior warning replace the community use policy with a new, more restrictive license. Even though Jim Butler had said during the OGL crisis days that they would post a proposed revision to the cup up for public comment, that didn't happen. And by the way, this is the same CUP that Piso is presently telling Archives of Nephus they can rely on to put out artwork and gallerian specific information under. Community outcry prompted Piso to reverse this decision soon after. So for many people who had been attracted to Piso for its historical transparency and relatively pro-consumer practices, we are concerned about Piso apparently changing and potentially becoming something else.

[00:31:26]Part of this is that people are unhappy with Piso's explanation for this decision and that's what we're going to go into next. Piso told Archives of Nethus and in their community post response that the lack of royalties was a problem. And I'll just read this paragraph. They say, "8 years ago, we entered into a licensing relationship with AON." The idea was simple. Archives of Nethus would receive early access to Piso products and exclusive access to artwork that wasn't available under the community use policy. And in return, Piso would receive royalties generated through that expanded use to cover the costs of the special relationship. Now, they go on to say that royalties never materialized, but that wasn't the sole reason to end the license. And then they go on to talk about costs, which the the logic of this paragraph is that the royalties are supposed to cover the costs. And what's implied is that Piso's recent financial hardships are making this too expensive to maintain. That if Archives of Nethis were now to generate royalties, this decision would no longer be necessary. basically that the archives of Nethis are a net financial loss that they can no longer maintain.

[00:32:42]But let's go back to what Piso said in its September 13th, 2018 blog post announcing this partnership. Chris Lamberts makes this post and he was maintaining the PRD, the reference document that Piso was coding and which now lives pretty much unchanged on the archives of Nethis at the link that I'll put up on the screen. You can see it for yourself. And I think this post is very enlightening and tends to contradict what Piso says. Now he writes, "As a fan and community advocate, you grow attachments to things you wouldn't have ever imagined you would. One of the projects I've gotten the opportunity to make my mark on at Piso is neatly nestled into that fan/ community/design challenge niche, the Pathfinder reference document. As it became obvious in this last year of architecting and laying out the plans for the future of piso.com and as the time increased between that quote last updated and quote date and our resources began to shift course, a problem arose that we needed to solve. How do we provide our community a free upto-date online version of the rules for our games? Will I finally get to share the answer with you all? And then goes on to announce that Blake Davis and the Archives of Nethus will be maintaining the reference documents on that site.

[00:34:04]And we are planning to launch the reference document for Pathfinder second edition with Archives of Nethus the following year. So they're saying this decision was made to save PISO money to save them the cost extensive cost of building and maintaining an SRD. That was the main value of this partnership to PISO. And I think many of us will agree that remains true. This empowered volunteers who were already in creating a reference document for Piso, one which Piso clearly values, rightfully so, to popularizing their game. And I have to say here when I heard about this partnership, I've always assumed that PISA was paying the people at Archives of Nethis to do their work. Maybe not a huge amount, but something nominal in thanks. And in Aon's post, they share about the contract. If we generated enough profit, we would pay Piso a royalty on that money. And this is the contract Piso agreed to. And here Piso says those royalties never materialized.

[00:35:08]And that was true for 8 years. and they could have walked out of the contract any time, just had to give 30 days notice. AON has made very clear to the Piso and the community that they never intended to generate more revenues than they were, at least significantly more revenues than they were already. And it's apparent that at no point Piso asked them to. So Piso apparently was happy with this relationship for 8 years. So what has changed now? We must ask. All right, Piso admits 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. Now, I'm going to comment here and first give a caveat. While I'm a lawyer, I am not an expert on this particular kind of law. Still, I'm joined by many in saying that this does not sound like a big enough cost to justify terminating this partnership with the volunteers of AON. I'll share that I've read a number of posts on the forums, including posts by Owen K.

[00:36:09]Stevens, a former PISO employee, saying that these costs that Piso is listing are actually more than we would initially think. and he shares some enlightening stories about some of the that Piso needs to deal with administering a license in general. But still, I wasn't convinced that there were significant costs with this contract specifically, at least to justify all the risk and loss of goodwill that they have to have known would result. I'll note that Stevens does not actually endorse Piso's decision. He just says he feels bad for all sides. an officer perspective that people might overlook. This idea that they need lawyers to review and follow up on contracts. Well, this contract has been unchanged for eight years. It hasn't needed constant amendment and revision. if they've ever needed to refer to the contract to address a specific question, a company of PISO size kind of has to have a lawyer on staff or a consultant that they're already retaining to administer PISO's contracts with many other partners. And some of those contracts are commercial licenses that I have to think are more complex and require more work than this particular one. The next thing in their list is finance employees to review and enter royalty statements. Well, they just said they've gotten no royalties to review and enter. Them including this kind of looks like padding.

[00:37:35]The next thing is licensing staff to provide assets and other support. We've only heard that Piso has emailed early PDFs and I assume that they have to send individual artwork files, all of the artwork from the book. In reviewing the more than 750 posts on the main piso.com messageboard threads on this topic, I've not seen any more tasks than that that are needed to be done on this front. And those tasks, emailing early PDFs and sending artwork are already being done with regard to Demiliplane as they manage Pathfinder Nexus. And I'm assuming PISO is continuing to do those things for Demilane. So I have to think unless there's something I don't know that this involves sending a similar email to Archives of Nethus and sharing a similar directory in the cloud that has the same files. Now I've seen some people counter on Reddit that it's not as simple as it sounds because different licensing agreements are involved. But I ask what exactly needs to be done differently and requires significant more cost to do something similar for archives of methods that they're already doing with demilane. What exactly? and I still have not been convinced. Now, this next part that they bring up in their post sounds more legit, having to send out DMCA and cease and desist notices for people who misuse the artwork that's on archives of Nethis. And additionally, I imagine you have to monitor the internet for this misuse. I have to think that that's not an insignificant amount of work. But one could argue that okay if the artwork is taken down from archives of Nethis that the same individuals could do the same taking the artwork from Demiliplane who we are assuming will still be posting that same artwork. Sure, one could no longer get artwork of the tooth fairy on archives of neatis this transparent file so that you can you know it doesn't include the white square background but one could also get the same artwork from demilane here it is and it's also a transparent file however and this is a valid argument the fact that archives of nethis post this artwork up and it's a free website and never charges for anything unlike demilane creates confusion among people who think well if archives and can do it. We can freely use the same content as well. Just as we can replicate and use the rules on Archives of Mais, we can do the same with the pictures. To which I'd say, isn't Piser's response kind of like hitting the nuclear button? If this is a valid concern of theirs, aren't there alternatives? Couldn't they make it clear on the website that this art is not to be used elsewhere? Maybe they could put an ugly watermark on each piece of art. or they could crop the art or downgrade the art. And in fact, here is something from the archives FAQ, the recent FAQ. They say that we downscaled the art at Piso's request so that AON would be a less attractive place to pull art from. Piso was already doing something and knew one thing that they could do to make misuse of the art less attractive. They could have downscaled it further. Piso's solution of killing the partnership is not proportional to the claimed problem. And lastly, there's no acknowledgement in Piso's post of what everyone's been saying that there's also a hard to quantify financial benefit of the AON contract that results in goodwill and onboarding people onto your games. Taken as a whole, this post's analysis of the situation is, to put it mildly, myopic. It simply asked, does the revenue of this line item exceed the costs? And this has been the main criticism of Piso's position that I've seen on the message boards. Reading the message boards, I was enlightened about what's called the doorman fallacy.

[00:41:23]Described in the 2019 book Alchemy by a British businessman named Rory Sutherland, the fallacy goes like this.

[00:41:29]Imagine you are the owner of a five-star hotel and you hire a consulting firm to come in and propose opportunities for efficiency improvements. The consultant observes the operations of the hotel and suggest that the role of the doorman can be automated. He currently costs $40,000 per year. You can install an automatic door opening mechanism and save that money annually. You fire the door man and install automatic door. The author then says, "Two years later, the hotel's a catastrophe because the doorman was doing multiple things, many of which were human and kind of tacit. Security would be one. Hailing taxis, dealing with luggage, recognizing regular guests, providing status to the hotel.

[00:42:11]There are loads and loads of value creation components to that doorman, which aren't captured in the open the door definition."

[00:42:18]Sutherland coined the term doorman fallacy to describe this phenomenon. It arises when you ground your understanding of value and only the most visible function or skills while failing to appreciate the full scope of tangible and intangible value that exists under the surface. So I think that is very apt in describing the value that archives of nethys provides to piso. In addition to what's already been said, I would add that tabletop role playing games require a group to play and a particular system having more players makes that system more attractive to potential players because it's easier to find a group. I learned this from former Piso owner and CEO Lisa Stevens in one of her blog posts 15 years ago where she called this network externalities. The post is on the screen if you want to pause. In the case of Pathfinder, being the number two crunchy game in the D&D family of games makes it easier for people to check out and try this game. Again, this and the other reasons are why Piso maintained this partnership for 8 years. Pursuant to this philosophy, Piso presently has a Humble bundle right now that ends on July 31st that you can partake in right now. For only $40, you get the physical game night box. It's like a oneshot adventure that you can run with friends to introduce them to the system along with 40 PDFs that includes player core, player core 2, GM core, monster core, how of the wild, and the beginner box.

[00:43:49]Note, if you include the physical game night box, which I just did in my order, you have to pay for shipping, just FYI.

[00:43:56]And a portion of the proceeds goes to charity. This is an amazing deal, and it's kind of the piso we know and love.

[00:44:03]It's similar in that it provides a inexpensive, okay, not free this time, but inexpensive entry point where someone who wants to check out Pathfinder can get a bunch of content at a much lower price than the sticker price with Piso having the confidence that once they get a taste of Pathfinder, they will come back, be loyal customers, and buy more. So, it just is very inongruent to this commenter why this company that does things like this Humble Bundle would stop supporting what has been arguably a more effective recruitment tool and ambassador for the game. And because a good number of people have not been satisfied by Piso's official explanation so far, people have started to fill in the blanks and are speculating on other possible reasons. I will admit that there is no hard evidence of any of these theories. It's in the nature of these things that there won't be a smoking gun, but that doesn't automatically disqualify them as potential reasons. One can still compare their plausibility versus the official reasons being given. So, number one, is it to make Demilane and Pathfinder Nexus and buying books and PDFs from Piso more attractive? I'll be honest, this was my first thought when I heard the news.

[00:45:16]Archives of Nethus would no longer have day one rules or artwork, but Demiliplane and Pathfinder Nexus would.

[00:45:23]So, Piso's issue with this partnership with Archives of Nethus wouldn't necessarily be the cost of the partnership itself, but the opportunity cost. Demilane makes more revenue than Archives of Nethus and therefore provides more royalties to Piso.

[00:45:38]Although the rules are free and viewable on Nexus, if you want to use the information in their tools, such as their character builder, you have to buy the books individually. According to Archives of Nethus, Piso has floated the idea of sending them PDFs of books still, but only on subscriber day, the day that subscribers to the various book lines receive them. But this apparently is much later than they currently are receiving the books under the partnership. So Piso was fine with sending them the rules content, but for some reason they find it important to give Archives of Nethus the rules later.

[00:46:15]Now, right when a book drops is obviously when there is the most interest book. Now, I'm sharing a theory that I've seen in a number of comments online. Perhaps Piso believes that more people will buy a physical book or a PDF or buy it on Pathfinder Nexus if it's not up on Archives of Nethus yet during this initial period when there is heightened interest. And in the long run, Archives of Nethus would lack much of the artwork, which would only be available if you bought the physical book or the PDF or went to Pathfinder Nexus. Presuming Nexus and Piso agree that that artwork still stays up for free, which if we take Piso's blog post and their concern about art theft at face value, we don't have an assurance that that will remain true. And this is where I have to say that increasing traffic to Demiliplane and increasing royalties to Piso are not illegitimate goals, especially given their current financial troubles with the Diamond Comics situation. But if that's it, okay, and I'm not a business expert. My gut tells me it's better to be transparent about that fact with your community. They were transparent when they announced a month ago that they would lay off 12 people. They did it in accord with an agreement with the union on how layoffs should be handled. And the community, while unhappy, accepted it as necessary. Here, on the other hand, the official reasons don't add up.

[00:47:43]So, it leaves people to understandably wonder, well, if the reasons you're giving us don't add up, what are the real reasons? And why don't you feel like you can tell them to us? I've also seen a counterargument on the message boards to Piso's possible belief that the rules going up on day one in Archives of Nethus depresses their sales. It's that many people check out the rules on Archives of Nethus first before they choose to buy. Now, Demilane might still have that same info, too, but it is harder to navigate according to some community members. And also, a player can buy a book on day one with the confidence of knowing that if they want to use a class or option from that book, their GM can easily look it up on Archives of Nethus to check it out themselves and allow it in their game.

[00:48:28]Now, let's assume Piso thought about this long and hard and carefully. They kind of had to be aware that this decision would lead to losing some goodwill and some current and future players. Perhaps they have data telling them that the revenue that they lose would be more than offset by what they gain by increased sales in books, PDFs, and Pathfinder Nexus royalties. But because of what I've raised earlier in this video and the value AON provides to Piso and the game, this I would say is risky at best. Another reason for people's concern and anxiety right now is that this normally pro community consumer-friendly company's uncharacteristic action suggests that Piso's financial situation might be quite bad right now. The concern is not that Piso is acting out of a Hasbro like greed, but out of desperation. Piso's official reasons for doing this, the administrative costs of the partnership.

[00:49:30]As one forum poster put it, it has the look of looking under couch cushions for loose change. I've seen the argument that Piso can't think about long-term growth right now with AON and has to think about short-term survival, but it's unclear what short-term immediate gain might exist from this decision. And this change risks losing goodwill and customers in the short term. Piso has been in this 8-year partnership not simply out of altruism, but because they believed that it helps grow the game, and so it's been done for financial reasons, but for some reason that partnership is now being abandoned. Then there are other potential possibilities.

[00:50:09]And this one is a definite possible real obstacle that would make this action completely understandable. It's possible that there are circumstances that we don't know about and that Piso cannot reveal or reveal much of. I admit I'm not an expert on this topic, but it's been suggested by former Piso employee Aaron Shanks, and here's a post that he made on the message boards that Piso might face a legal problem maintaining the current partnership. But he says, "Piso cannot legally give commercial assets away to another for-profit LLC, which Rosewins, the entity behind Archives of Methus is, cannot do that for free while charging competitors."

[00:50:48]And here I'm assuming he's referring largely to the artwork and stuff that is outside the cup. He proposes that Rosewinds should reorganize into a nonprofit charity/digital archive to remove this legal hurdle.

[00:51:02]Also, Piso and AON could receive taxdeductible donations such as digital preservation grants. And to be honest, if they were to get such grants, I would love for the people who work on AON to get some stipens for their work. And according to Aaron Shanks, being a nonprofit could address some potential legal issues of involving people who are not paid. I'll have a link in the description to this post if you're interested. Now, if legal restrictions on what Piso can license archives of Nethis to use for free do exist, they will be much better off being transparent about that. Another possibility is that Demiliplane is unhappy having to pay for access that archives of Natsis is getting for free and that this issue came up in talks with Piso. Ending the partnership with AON might prevent an immediate loss of revenue in this respect. Piso's post did say that AON's access to artwork, maps, worlds, and stories is an exception and that ending this exception allows us to simplify our policies and protect the clarity of our IP. So, PISA might feel this is necessary in order to relate to Demoplane and a host of other potential commercial entities. One other possibility I read in the forums was that Piso, since they just lost their book distribution deal with Diamond, needs another distributor. And perhaps Piso feels this is necessary to land a deal where a distributor may not understand why they'd contract with a company to distribute physical books whose content is up for free on a website. Lastly, another concern I've seen and the most frightening one is that Piso cannot write its finances and that they are trying to make Piso more appealing to a potential buyer if there isn't already one in mind who might not see the wisdom of maintaining a partnership that does not turn in an immediate profit. Again, I am not an expert and I don't know how actually viable these various theories are, but they strike me as plausible. Still, they venture into speculation, but it's one that myself and other people in the community cannot avoid making. So, I think that Piso, if it can be transparent, or okay, let's put it this way, they should be more transparent than they are now to preserve the community's goodwill and address the anxiety and concerns of their customers.

[00:53:20]Now, before I move on to what's next and moving forward, I want to address an insinuation made by Piso's post that has been echoed by some in the community that archives of Nethis did not act appropriately in making their public post on July 14th. Now, what am I talking about here? Piso's post ended with this. When we first broke the news to archives in Nethus that we were going to end the license, we offered a marketing agreement to make the change less impactful. But those conversations were not concluded before they chose to publish their notice. We remain open to discussions with archives about ways to support the site in a manner that is less resource inensive and more protective of Piso IP going forward.

[00:54:03]This made it sound like Piso made an offer and that they were in ongoing negotiations when Archives and Nethis posted to the community. This has led to some members of the community saying that Archives of Nethis did not act appropriately as well and that they jumped the gun. And I have a few things to say about this. First, the issue of whether Archives of Nethis should have made that post when it did is much more secondary than the issue of whether Piso should continue its partnership with Archives of Nethus. That's the main issue. And even if one were to conclude that AON acted inappropriately or made a mistake, the bottom line continues to be what to do now going into the future.

[00:54:44]What will be best for Piso and Pathfinder and Starfinder going forward?

[00:54:49]Now, as far as I'm concerned, that settles this question. But for some people, it doesn't. And I've seen a number of comments online that continue to press this matter. Now, I feel it's important to say some things in Aon's defense. Now, this may not interest every viewer. And so feel free to go to the timestamp if you want to skip this topic and go to my next point. So after reading a number of posts and thinking about this, my main takeaway is that it's Piso who has much more work to do on its communication. My starting point in this whole controversy is that Archives of Nethus is a volunteer team.

[00:55:25]telling these people who are fans like us and much more than that because they put in thousands of hours of work to improve the game for Piso for free.

[00:55:36]Telling them as late as legally possible without any prior warning that the partnership was terminated and without an convincing explanation must have hurt.

[00:55:48]>> I'm not going to lie. Uh despite the amount of hair follicles on my face, I'm capable of a good weep. And it did bring a bit of a tear to my eye to to hear the news.

[00:55:58]>> Piso had raised no problems that they had had with the relationship prior to that and they made no effort to work with archais to try to address them. In addition to conveying a lack of gratitude, this was a failure in communication. And what was this quote offer and quote that they talk about in their blog post? The whole time Piso had conveyed to them that the partnership was dead. All they had done was float ideas as part of a promotional deal. I'm not sure why that term is being used to ease the termination of the partnership for AON. Things like a grace period for keeping the art up or giving them PDFs on subscription day instead. But as Blake Davis reports in his recent video, they were getting those subscriptions already because they were and still are subscribers to Piso's subscription lines. They would lose the main benefits of the partnership and the relationship would become informal, which I assume means not in writing and not binding on Piso, which Aon found unsatisfactory.

[00:56:59]Keeping the formal partnership was off the table. On June 24th, when Jim Butler broke the news to Blake Davis, they exchanged several emails. Blake Davis emailed him a week later on July 1st to follow up and informed Jim Butler that he was going to make a public announcement before July 24th. but that he first wanted to get his questions answered that he had raised previously, including what exactly could still stay up on the website under the CUP. Jim said he was off that week and that they could talk the following week about the promotional deal he had suggested before. And yet, two weeks passed.

[00:57:34]There's criticism that AON should have sent a follow-up email. There's criticism that their email to Piso 2 to three hours before they made a public post that included bullet points of what they'd include in their public post should have given them more time, maybe a day or two to respond. Now, that's a fair criticism, and AON admits that they could have waited longer. However, as Blake put it in their recent video, >> after 2 weeks of silence, I presume they didn't have anything else they wanted to say.

[00:58:02]>> Now, as far as I can tell, the partnership was dead and off of the table. So given everything, how Piso dropped the news on AON and their faulty communication, 20 of the 30 days passed without answers to a number of Blake Davis's questions. I think Blake reasonably believed that the partnership was dead and so might as well tell the people who use Archives and Nethis the news in advance.

[00:58:28]>> Why did we make a statement at all before the 24th? Is I mean, I just wanted to give everyone a heads up. I again could have left it until the 24th.

[00:58:37]Maybe I should have waited those 10 days to see if Piso had any other changes. I presume they didn't have anything else they wanted to say. And with 10 days left, I just didn't want to risk it any longer. I wanted to get something out to let people know what was going on so that they could react. They could, you know, enjoy the art there while we still had it. They could ask their questions.

[00:58:59]They could get out their emotions, etc. I I did not want that to happen the day of. That just seemed wrong.

[00:59:07]>> And he reported feeling increasingly stressed with each passing day, wanting to make this announcement and communicate with the player base, which I think is understandable. One could say he was prioritizing communicating with the player base, which Piso, given what it was doing, did not seem as intent in doing. Piso didn't seem to adequately communicate with Archa Nethus and their July 15th blog post also did a poor job, I would argue, in communicating with the community. Now, it's also true that AON included a call to action in their post.

[00:59:40]They openly disagreed with the decision.

[00:59:42]They said, "We are sure this news is as disappointing to all of you as it was to us, and we wish we could do more to change it. If you have any feedback about this change, we would encourage you to direct it to Piso in a polite manner using their message boards or email. Some say this post opened a campaign of harassment against Piso and also unfairly painted Piso in a bad light. To which I'll say, let's have some perspective. If anyone is to blame for Piso having a poor reputation at this moment, it is Piso for its decision to end the partnership, which again is the main issue that is upsetting people right now. And they tell people to be polite and to this day discourage people from sending vitriol to Piso. And from what I've seen on the message boards, while there's been passion and some degree of heatedness back and forth, people have been largely civil and expressing their disappointment and disagreement with Piso's decision. And despite all of this, the volunteers at AON say they are keeping their PISO memberships. So telling people to implicitly continue to support Piso.

[01:00:49]There's a claim that Aon's post deliberately painted Piso in a bad light, such as implying that Piso only wanted royalties. However, that appears to be the only reason Blake Davis received from Piso as of the time they made this post. Some say that AON should have included the fact that Piso offered them a six-month grace period to keep content up before taking it down, and that their post left it open for people to conclude that Piso demanded an immediate takeown. Should they have mentioned the six-month grace period?

[01:01:20]Probably. But Blake Davis explains in the recent video that it doesn't take much work. It takes about an hour's work to take down the artwork. That this wasn't really a concern of theirs. They just wanted to, as he said, rip off the band-aid and prevent confusion. They apparently were less concerned about when the artwork goes down than the fact that the artwork was going down in the first place. Then there's criticism that AON posted this publicly only two to three hours after sending some bullet points to Piso. Now, I'll say here that yes, that is too short a time to give somebody to respond to an email in the business world. But as Blake Davis said, quote, I assume they didn't have anything else they wanted to say. And he had told them on July 1st that he plans to make a public post and reiterated his questions that he wanted answers on for said post. And still after 2 weeks, actually 3 weeks for the questions he raised on June 24th, he had not received answers. Nor did Jim Butler in his reply to the July 1st email say, "Hold off on a public statement. Let's make a joint statement." He didn't do that. And if we're talking about communication here, I'll reiterate what I said. There's not just these two parties, but us, the community. Isn't keeping us informed about important developments that are coming up in a timely fashion important as well? All the evidence points to the fact that PISO was going to let this partnership end without much of an explanation to the community. not that different from what happened with the community use policy two years ago when they announced it was over and replaced with a new policy and they hadn't raised prior to that that they had any concerns with the prior policy that they wanted community input as to a future policy.

[01:03:06]None of that had happened. No communication and that's kind of what was going on here. A change like this, ending the partnership with Archives of Nethis, which had been a go-to resource for people playing these games, can't just be done without explanation and without giving the community an opportunity to ask questions and get our concerns addressed. Piso needed to communicate it was happening, the reasons for the decision, and give people an opportunity to respond. and archives of Nethus public post was the one thing that up to this point that had done that and which further made Piso make their post. Now ideally they would have put out a joint statement but archives and Nethus wanted to express their disagreement with the decision something that Piso would not have signed on to and I'll get to this later but I think it was appropriate for them to express their disagreement. Now, despite my criticisms, I am not saying and concluding that Piso was malicious here. Perhaps Jim Butler had personal circumstances that prevented him from being on top of things, but he's the CEO archives and Nethis is one of Piso's most important partners. And from his previous role being Piso's VP of marketing and licensing for 5 years, he should know the importance of communicating effectively with partners.

[01:04:22]And if he had personal circumstances preventing him from doing his job, he needed to delegate. And this is where I'm going to say that I'm glad Archives of Nethis put out this announcement. In 2024, PISO had dropped the news on the community that the CUP was being replaced. Doing it in that manner after the decision had been made and without providing the community to provide input into it did not prevent an outcry. In fact, it contributed to the outcry. If they had tried to do the same here, there would have still been fallout and a loss of goodwill for Piso and people would have more questions and more uncertainty about what's going on. And it would have been presented as a feta comple which it's generally harder to reverse a decision that's been made than preventing it from happening in the first place. and Aon's choice to openly disagree with this decision played no small part in rallying the community to fight to preserve the close relationship that Piso has had with his community that I think many would agree is important to Piso's identity its relationship to its customers and long-term survival and short-term and another thing to consider is that if one of the community theories that I raised earlier is true that some other business entity who doesn't understand the importance of archives of nethys and PISO's relationship to its community might be behind this decision, then well, the community response right now has now made it undeniable for such entity to continue to think that way.

[01:05:51]Given the real possibility that preserving this partnership helps Piso's short-term and long-term success, these hopefully few days of controversy ultimately might have prevented something worse. because AON's call to players and other fans to voice their concerns to Piso appears to be working.

[01:06:11]Before that announcement, keeping the partnership was off the table between Piso and AON. But just before the close of business hours Friday, Jim Butler put up this post saying that they would be meeting with AON this week and quote, "If we're able to find a path forward together, Pathfinder, I see what he did there. We'll share that update jointly so everyone gets the full picture at the same time. So it's now possible that the partnership might be maintained and it's likely that the community voicing its opinions about this made the difference.

[01:06:45]All right. So what's next? So I just went over the fact that the two sides are now meeting and that we'll possibly get a joint announcement. I hope the partnership can continue for all the reasons I've stated. Now, I just want to give some general comments to hopefully provide some perspective for all of us.

[01:07:01]There was a heated couple of days there when these announcements came out. There was some talk of a boycott at the time, which I think those talks have died down because given PISO's current financial situation, I think many people see that that might be counterproductive. But all of the discussions, all the viewpoints that I've seen come from a place of wanting Piso and Pathfinder and Starfinder to succeed. Now, I'm an ardent socialist who sides with workers and opposes anti-consumer policies. And at the same time, I'll acknowledge that there's a difference between Chris Cox, the CEO of Hasbro, who speaks mainly to and was chosen because of his ability to speak to investors and who pockets millions of dollars of executive bonuses perm. There's a difference between him and Jim Butler, Piso CEO, who has been a gamer for decades, plays Pathfinder, and certainly wants to see this game and this community thrive. I think the vast majority of the community understands that this is not a situation of greed.

[01:08:05]It apparently is Piso dealing with a bad financial situation in apparently not the best and definitely not the most transparent way. I've been critical of Piso in this video, but I think the community's understanding of this fact means that much of the community's goodwill towards Piso and its leadership can be restored. Now, if ending the partnership is necessary, there needs to be a satisfying explanation to the community as to why, or at least one that doesn't make it look like the company's hiding something. People accepted the layoffs a month ago because Piso's decision made sense to people.

[01:08:38]Now, this doesn't make sense to many people. That is the problem that needs to be fixed and it can be fixed either by maintaining the partnership or by being more transparent. Now, as for the partnership, on the one hand, if the partnership ends, it will still remain true that Piso's rules are out there for free under the ORC license, and Piso will still be a company that is remarkably open about the use and reproduction of its rules and has had other commendable practices that raises it far above its main competitor and above other competitors. On the other hand, I think that terminating the partnership is not good for the game.

[01:09:18]and as far as I can tell isn't good for the company. And I think that the way they treated the hardworking people at Archives of Nethis is wrong. I want the partnership to continue and I want the team's morale to be restored. I think it would be good if Piso issued an apology to them and demonstrated its commitment to support these most dedicated members of this community. And perhaps the partnership between them can be expanded. Perhaps there are ways to restore and foster more community goodwill and address Piso's current financial situation. When this controversy broke out last week, someone made this post on the Pathfinder subreddit titled, "Adventure PDFs are currently on sale for 30% off. This sale expired on Friday, July 17th." And I don't think I'm the only one who didn't know about this. And apparently, they announced it on Blue Sky and Tumblr.

[01:10:14]And also, there's that Humble Bundle I mentioned, which goes through July 31st.

[01:10:17]It's still up, link in the description.

[01:10:20]And you can guess where I'm going here, and I don't claim credit. I actually saw this in one of the message boards. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't spend much time on Tumblr or Blue Sky.

[01:10:31]However, as a Pathfinder 2 GM and player, I spend a lot of time on Archives of Nethis. We have our eyeballs on that website all the damn time. Now, what if Piso had, say, a big banner pop up on Archives of Nethus announcing their PDF sale or this Humble Bundle or announcing new products and sales in the future? What if they really wanted to generate interest in something like a new Pathfinder CRPG or there's a new stream coming up in Pisokon or Gen Con?

[01:11:03]What if Archives of Nethis directed people to their Twitch channel? And why not leverage this website's excellence as a reference tool to direct traffic to Piso's store? People go to this website all the time to find cool character options, and everything points to in bright letters to what book said option comes from. I personally love this website to look up rules and play on the fly. But I also like physical books to peruse them when I'm trying to absorb a lot of new material, especially with a full artwork and layout on display. And I like to have those books on my vanity shelf. Why not when the new remastered magus comes out, for example, with Impossible Magic at the end of this month, have a link on the Magus page to purchase Impossible Magic and it could be an affiliate link. So, not only does that increase sales, it could give a little income, a small amount to Archives of Nethus, and it allows Piso gives them more data to see how much sales are being driven by this website.

[01:12:02]And for people are checking out Pathfinder Starfinder who come from other systems, why not have things on this website that more effectively convert them into customers? If you're someone checking out Pathfinder 2e and you go to this website, you'll see this link, which I personally think should be more prominent, saying new to Pathfinder second edition, click here. And when you click here, you see this. It's basically a lot of text that goes through the basic rules and making a character. Now, this is not very visually appealing.

[01:12:34]However, what if people were to direct it to buy a product that will teach them the game like the beginner box? Why not a link to this beginner box page or to this overview of Pathfinder page with information on how best to learn the game, I think the beginner box is great, or listing the main core books that you want. Now, I'm not a business guy, so maybe there's some flaw in what I'm presenting here that I have not thought of, but I think I've demonstrated that there is untapped potential in this partnership. People have more knowledge than I do, can probably find other ways to leverage this website, which has become for me an indispensable tool, and I use it frequently to generate revenue and foster community goodwill using this partnership. So those are my thoughts and hopefully we'll get some good news soon. The call to express your opinion siso is still open and I encourage people to participate. Also I should mention that archives of Nethus has its Patreon and I encourage people to support them there. I'll have a link in the description. And hopefully Piso can restore a confidence that it is what it historically has been, a company that has valued its community and who we're happy to support with our money because of what they are providing to us. So that's it. [laughter] Let's do the outro. Again, I'm Ronald the rules lawyer. And in addition to supporting my Patreon, which gives adree early access to most my videos and exclusive content, check out my Discord.

[01:14:03]There are thousands of us. We talk Pathfinder 2e, Starfinder, and other gaming. And if you want to play Pathfinder 2e in our drop and dropout organized play system, Endless Tale Tavern, that will be on my Discord as well. So that's it. Thank you for watching. I'll see you next time.