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I understand how the licenses work, I also publish and write Pathfinder content.

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This doesn't apply currently, obviously, but we at least have to keep in mind that Paizo HAS tried to make absolutely moronic decisions in the past, and they only walked it back after massive community backlash. Fingers crossed they do the same thing from this backlash.

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Paizo CUP Revocation and Reinstation Overview – Across the Horizon's blog

From all the info I have found regarding Paizo trying to remove the CUP, they were trying to make it so that publishing ANY Pathfinder content, whether it was using their IP or not, would require doing so through Infinite. athnerdcast.com/paizo-cup-re...

athnerdcast.com

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It was also an attempt of controlling all content written for the game, because part of the FUP was an attempt to force any 3PP written for PF2e to only be allowed to be sold on Infinite, which required you to sign over 50% of your earnings and all of your ownership rights of your products.

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I haven't really seen any "campaigns" to boycott honestly, just a lot of upset individuals. Frankly, I am just hoping that Paizo walks this back like they walked back their attempt to remove the CUP.

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Unless they actually suffer consequences, they will just keep trying to do this shit. Nobody wants another WotC or a Paizo that is entirely driven by c-suite profit maximizing bullshit.

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I do want Paizo to survive, but not if it means them screwing over the volunteers and community that make their game popular by continuing to make horrible, shortsighted decisions. Don't forget, they tried to dismantle their CUP entirely not too long ago and only didn't because of backlash.

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Part of the issue is how else do you tell a company you are unhappy with their decisions, especially when they seem to be completely ignoring the backlash? At this point, if Paizo doesn't walk things back they are just digging their own graves. Blaming the people who are upset seems kinda callous.

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And finally, its a massive loss to Paizo, who is throwing away free advertising and community goodwill to save relative pennies, and is likely losing more money in lost sales due to this than they could possibly be saving.

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It is a massive loss to GMs, where even if you buy the book at launch you can't easily reference the books without busting out and slowing flipping through a physical tome or PDF at the table to track down the info, and then sharing it with the players is even more annoying.

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Archives of Nethys @archivesofnethys.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

It *is* a massive loss that Nethys will not receive their copies of the books at launch date and the volunteers who upload the data will be now forced to crunch even harder to get it out as fast as possible to avoid community vitriol.

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Reposted by em—v

Hi everyone - as promised, we have posted a summary of our earlier video in text, covering the questions we went over along with a few others that were not covered for the sake of brevity. www.patreon.com/nethys/posts...

patreon.com

Partnership Dissolution FAQ - Summary | Rose-Winds LLC

Hi everyone, We promised a summary of the video content, so we've condensed the points made in the video into this FAQ. Along with the point

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I might end up changing my mind in the given weeks after things start to cool down, but its still a huge blow to whatever momentum and motivation I had to bother and its incredibly frustrating.

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The last few months I had been pretty excited about getting my hands on Impossible Magic and writing Necromancer options, likely as Studio M—'s first PF2e release, but after all this shit its *really* hard for me to justify even buying the book, let along releasing options for the community.

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I know it is *likely* only a very vocal and annoying minority, but seeing public opinion sway so far towards the negativity towards a group of volunteers just kind of sours whatever good opinions I had. It also sours my opinions of Paizo, and working in the ecosystem of PF2e at all.

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Vent post, but after seeing what seems like the majority opinion of the PF2e community these past few days regarding things, it kind of kills a lot of my motivation to ever produce any sort of works for PF2e at all. Huge amounts of negativity towards 3PP in general, and anyone who isn't Paizo.

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Nethys is fucked over by having to crunch harder to get releases up either way, and then would *also* be beholden to whatever "marketing strategy" Paizo was trying to shove down their throats. Whatever that strategy is, it wasn't worth keeping the images on the site and is an awful "middle ground".

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The "middle ground" that people are clamoring for is that Nethys agrees to a marketing strategy that forces them to generate revenue for paizo, which will inevitably enshittify the website, for the "benefit" of receiving books at the same time as subscribers, and getting to use art.

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em—v @em-v.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

What exactly are the "inconsistencies" here? They are allowed to use art that is available in the CUP, it just sounds like they are *choosing* not to because it would cause them more work and have more questions directed at them that they would need to deal with.

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www.patreon.com/nethys/posts... At 3:05 in the video, but also it was extraordinarily easy to tell it was for revenue-related reasons considering Paizo's blog mentioned that multiple times, and was insisting on forcing a *marketing* agreement on them to retain a *worse* license.

patreon.com

Partnership Dissolution FAQ Video | Rose-Winds LLC

Hi all, We have seen an enormous amount of questions and comments out there and we wanted to address some of the more common ones we are se

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Reposted by em—v

Avi Lewis @avilewis.ca · 16/07/2026

Incredibly brazen for the Prime Minister to boast about the “lasting benefits” of expanding fossil fuel production on a day like today. Record-breaking heatwaves. Toxic smoke engulfing cities and towns. Out of control wildfires forcing entire communities to evacuate. /1

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em—v @em-v.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

The "worst misstep" here is Paizo trying to force aonprd into generating a revenue stream for them via a "marketing strategy", one which aonprd declined after getting more info. Aonprd being a free resource is extraordinarily beneficial for Paizo, and they are shooting themselves in the foot here.

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Yeah, I am just finding it particularly hard to believe anything coming out of Paizo regarding this right now when they couldn't even negotiate in good faith with aonprd, and then lied about doing so. I also want PF2e to succeed, and I know that even if Paizo dies the game isn't going with them.

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You say this, but years later PF1e is still getting community support in the form of tools (all the PF1e Foundry stuff) and 3rd party support despite it being a "dead game". The community isn't *as* active as it was during PF1e's prime, but it still exists and is still continuing on.

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If it is anything like Pathfinder 1e, community support will continue long after the game is "dead".

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It is kind of hard to believe Jim's statements when he was caught not actually discussing the "marketing agreement" that he tried to shift blame on to aonprd by bringing up, and had ghosted aonprd until they went public. It is really hard to give Paizo the benefit of the doubt in this situation.

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"When we first broke the news to Archives of Nethys 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." paizo.com/threads/rzs8... Really convenient of you.

Nethys Response:

When we first were told about the partnership dissolution on 6/24, Jim did suggest that we could do some marketing agreement that would allow us to keep the art up for longer and make it easier on the AoN team to remove. We were never told the details of this agreement beyond the offer being made. I emailed them again on 7/1 to confirm some other answers to my questions about the partnership dissolution, but got a response from Jim that he was out of office and we could discuss a marketing agreement on the following week. Perhaps I misunderstood and the intent was for us to lead that discussion, but from my perspective I was waiting on more details about this potential offer. As it stands, we never did hear anything further from them until after our announcement yesterday on 7/14. With only 10 days left before the dissolution date, we did not feel like an announcement about the changes could wait much longer.

Paizo has since followed up with us today with more details about a possible agreement, involving a way to potentially keep some art (but not all) along with PDF access at subscription time (not earlier). Having visited this with the team, we are not that interested in what has been offered so far. Having partial art (rather than all/none) is not a great look for our site and would just result in more user questions we'd have to field. As for the PDFs, most of the team already maintains their own subscriptions and wishes to keep it that way.

We will have a more clear FAQ on our website soon with other answers to common questions.

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Image version, in case the original gets deleted.

When we first were told about the partnership dissolution on 6/24, Jim did suggest that we could do some marketing agreement that would allow us to keep the art up for longer and make it easier on the AoN team to remove. We were never told the details of this agreement beyond the offer being made. I emailed them again on 7/1 to confirm some other answers to my questions about the partnership dissolution, but got a response from Jim that he was out of office and we could discuss a marketing agreement on the following week. Perhaps I misunderstood and the intent was for us to lead that discussion, but from my perspective I was waiting on more details about this potential offer. As it stands, we never did hear anything further from them until after our announcement yesterday on 7/14. With only 10 days left before the dissolution date, we did not feel like an announcement about the changes could wait much longer.

Paizo has since followed up with us today with more details about a possible agreement, involving a way to potentially keep some art (but not all) along with PDF access at subscription time (not earlier). Having visited this with the team, we are not that interested in what has been offered so far. Having partial art (rather than all/none) is not a great look for our site and would just result in more user questions we'd have to field. As for the PDFs, most of the team already maintains their own subscriptions and wishes to keep it that way.

We will have a more clear FAQ on our website soon with other answers to common questions.

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paizo.com - Forums / Paizo: General Discussion: Archives of Nethys Paizo Partnership ENDS

paizo.com/threads/rzs8... Response to this from AONPRD further goes to show how utterly badly Paizo is handling this. Just left them on read for a FUCKING MONTH and only followed up on the "marketing details" the same day they tried to deflect blame to AONPRD for their lack of responses.

paizo.com

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Shifting blame to aonprd at the end and then blaming them for not making you revenue when it was ALWAYS a donation-based free service feels so fucking scummy to me. This absolute reads like you were trying to pressure them to generate profits, and then when they refused you dropped them.

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