Updates on the Community Use Policy and Fan Content Policy

I have to admit, I am pretty out of the loop on this one, but I'm glad whatever it was is no longer.

Very good news, the PCGen team was not looking forward to going through the 3271 data files for Paizo by hand.

Good call. Hopefully everyone involved from both ends can take a breather now.

A very well-used Hero Point. I thank you for listening to the community.

Paizo, thank you for listening to the community and reinstating the CUP with merely some housekeeping updates. And thank you community for responding so quickly and clearly to make it so clear this was concerning. Going to echo a few others here in saying there is nothing like a good dialogue. I can only hope for future community changes there may be a commentary period.

One quick thought. I know you said the FCU will have no changes but be in parallel... However just to make things absolutely clear that it will be blocking nothing -and the CUP is what handles things instead- would it perhaps make sense to either strike Requirement 2? Or at least modify it to mention the Community Use Policy as another thing you would use instead of the FCU?

From what we're hearing now, it sounds like this was genuinely a mistake, a classic "our lawyers aren't also devout gamers intimately familiar with the community importance of Hephaistos and pathbuilder2e dot com" situation. That's not super surprising. I'm honestly not sure what Paizo's evil master plan was supposed to be after deliberately getting rid of those pesky accessibility supplements.

I'm seeing the argument that Paizo should have had this license reviewed more thoroughly beforehand by non-lawyers. I assume they were on a bit of a timeline with GenCon around the corner, but closer review could have avoided this whole kerfuffle, so it seems like a fair point to me.

Anyways, thank you to Andrew White for your advocacy, thank you to Mark Moreland for braving the community backlash and charting a new course, and thank you to members of the creative community like the Foundry team, who immediately took action to clarify and make sure Paizo understood what the consequences of this change actually were. :)

One quick thought. I know you said the FCU will have no changes but be in parallel... However just to make things absolutely clear that it will be blocking nothing -and the CUP is what handles things instead- would it perhaps make sense to either strike Requirement 2? Or at least modify it to mention the Community Use Policy as another thing you would use instead of the FCU?

We will be going into the FCP and making updates and revisions now that it no longer needs to do (most of) what the CUP does as well as the new things it does that the CUP never did. Our priority was getting the CUP back up and in effect so that content creators didn't have to worry about the fates of their existing projects. I don't have a timeline on clarifications and changes to the FCP at this time, but we will be working on those next. In the meantime, the FCP still does all the new stuff the CUP doesn't (like allow for monetization of content), so creators who have already started on projects based on those permissions can continue to do so.

Anyways, thank you to Andrew White for your advocacy, thank you to Mark Moreland for braving the community backlash and charting a new course, and thank you to members of the creative community like the Foundry team, who immediately took action to clarify and make sure Paizo understood what the consequences of this change actually were. :)

I want to second that thanks, Mark's presence on the boards was a great help in keeping calm and keeping faith that paizo's eyes were on the issue and in tune to the various grievances the community had. I was unaware of Andrew's involvement but double kudos to him. Its incredibly relieving to have someone championing the community's interests internally (not that all team members don't have the community's interest in mind at some level mind you!).

Great stuff

A point of information, as I have seen elsewere (not in this thread) that some people thought that the CUP (old and new) was applying to all forum/reddit/discord posts, but it doesn't. It doesn'T really need to.
But more specifically, if you read the CUP, you will see that there are "boiler plate" text that you need to include for your "content" to be protected by the CUP. And I have seen a lot of people not knowing it. (Gisher, earlier in this thread, posted their document that DO have it, and is a perfect example of how to do it!)
But yeah.
Quote with the stuff you need to include that is hard to include in a forum/Reddit/discord post:

You must reproduce Paizo's copyright and trademark notices from all Paizo Material that you use in your project.

And:

To use Paizo Material under this Policy you must include the following notice in a legible/accessible form in each project, product, or on each website that uses any Paizo Material:

"[This website, product name, Twitch show title, etc.] uses trademarks and/or copyrights owned by Paizo Inc., used under Paizo's Community Use Policy (paizo.com/licenses/communityuse). We are expressly prohibited from charging you to use or access this content. [This website, product name, Twitch show title, etc.] is not published, endorsed, or specifically approved by Paizo. For more information about Paizo Inc. and Paizo products, visit paizo.com.

If the Paizo Material you're using clearly credits its authors or artists, you must reproduce that credit. You agree to include up-to-date contact information in a visible location applicable for your project.

BUT! The second quote actually contain something that give a good indication of what kind of "publishing" Paizo believes would NEED that protection:

in each project, product, or on each website

So a project (live play, actual play, class review video), product (book, PDF, google doc) or website (online tool, wiki, etc). A single forum/reddit/discord post don't fit in either of these 3, and should be protected under fair use.

There was also extra stuff to do in teh OLD CUP to be protected under it that they removed, I'm not including it here to reduce confusion.

But yeah. Just putting this out there in case there was people still confused/ignorant of this specificity. (Still not legal counsel. READ the full CUP text to be sure you follow it correctly for your projects.)

I wish the "1e on Infinite" issue could have been handled here too, but I am very satisfied with what we did get. This was the greatest of my concerns, and this should at minimum mean that the 1e (and OGL 2e) communities can support their preferred rules as a free endeavor, on top of the other more immediately obvious consequences of a reinstated (and improved!) Community Use Policy. I'm more hopeful than ever that Paizo will address these other concerns in due time, and I'm glad that they prioritized the most pressing issue of the license changes. Cheers to everyone at Paizo, especially Mark Moreland who did an admirable job keeping us calm through the worst of it.

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

Hey, something I've been wondering about--what's the status of stuff from PF2 that was fully created by Paizo but published pre-ORC? Are Pathfinder Infinite creations not allowed to feature poppets and thaumaturges? I'm sure that's not right, but I'm not sure what the correct read is here. What happens to Grand Bazaar and Dark Archive content?

EDIT: Got my question answered elsewhere! Apparently Pathfinder Infinite covers just about anything Paizo's made, OGL or ORC, as long as it's a Paizo creation and not, say, chromatic dragons. Poppets are fine. Don't mind me.

I'm glad you got your question answered, but I also wanted to address it because it is very much a FAQ that we get across all channels. The reinstatement of the CUP today means that some of the FAQs we were going to issue to clarify some stuff (like this) got pushed to a "phase 2" status, but such clarification are coming as soon as more pressing issues are handled.

It seems that the answer you got is accurate, so I'll let the community continue to be the helpful helpers they are.

Hopefully those "more pressing issues" also include a first errata pass for Player Core 2, which had quite a lot of issues popping up since its release, like the exact duration of Flash of Grandeur and the like. :)

From what we're hearing now, it sounds like this was genuinely a mistake, a classic "our lawyers aren't also devout gamers intimately familiar with the community importance of Hephaistos and pathbuilder2e dot com" situation. That's not super surprising. I'm honestly not sure what Paizo's evil master plan was supposed to be after deliberately getting rid of those pesky accessibility supplements.

If I'd honestly thought Paizo were malicious (the way some other seaside-based companies are), I wouldn't have hung around making a fuss. I'd have jumped ship. I stayed because Paizo have repeatedly tried to do the right thing for the community, and clearly just screwed up this time.

I'm very relieved with this resolution, and particularly with the amount of extra work I don't need to do.

Hopefully those "more pressing issues" also include a first errata pass for Player Core 2, which had quite a lot of issues popping up since its release, like the exact duration of Flash of Grandeur and the like. :)

There are other threads where discussion of errata are more appropriate. The team working on our products and the team working on our licensing are completely separate. Let's try to keep the discussion here on topic, please.

Thank you, Paizo, for listening and fixing 80% of the problem.

Please don't stop there. The OGL/Pathfinder Infinite issue is still a problem, although it did shrink because the CUP at least allows free PF1 resources to still be released.

Considering that the entire point of the ORC is to divest from the OGL, I think keeping chromatic dragons and ettercaps in Pathfinder Infinite going forward is going to be a much tougher sell. Maybe they'll figure something out! But I don't personally read it as being Paizo's fault. Paizo doesn't own chromatic dragons or ettercaps, Hasbro does, and Hasbro's made it clear that they are not trustworthy stewards.

Fingers crossed. It's a rough situation.

Considering that the entire point of the ORC is to divest from the OGL, I think keeping chromatic dragons and ettercaps in Pathfinder Infinite going forward is going to be a much tougher sell. Maybe they'll figure something out! But I don't personally read it as being Paizo's fault. Paizo doesn't own chromatic dragons or ettercaps, Hasbro does, and Hasbro's made it clear that they are not trustworthy stewards.

Fingers crossed. It's a rough situation.

While I haven't personally gone back to 1E for two years I am more worried about people who want to make content using the rules of 1E more so than OGL Creatures. If someone wanted to convert a 2E ap to 1E and put a lot of work into it and thinks they deserve to charge a few bucks for that on Infinite they should be able to. We have seen that although 2E has become popular there are still some people who are sticking to 1E for good and as long as there are people willing to make the content they deserve the same shot at being paid for it like has been possible and continues to be possible for 2E.

Yeah, monsters are an easy example, but the third edition D&D rules family as a whole is in the same pickle right now. Paizo didn't make D&D 3.0, and PF1 will always be a very well-expanded D&D 3.75.

Considering that the entire point of the ORC is to divest from the OGL, I think keeping chromatic dragons and ettercaps in Pathfinder Infinite going forward is going to be a much tougher sell. Maybe they'll figure something out! But I don't personally read it as being Paizo's fault. Paizo doesn't own chromatic dragons or ettercaps, Hasbro does, and Hasbro's made it clear that they are not trustworthy stewards.

Chromatic dragons and ettercaps are in the 5.1 SRD, which got released under Creative Commons. As far as I can tell there is no prohibition on using CC material on Infinite (or in an ORC release), so - I think - someone could do a 2e conversion of chromatic dragons or ettercaps either under ORC or on Infinite, provided they did it themselves and didn't just copy Paizo's OGL versions.

Bravo Paizo. Thanks for doing the right thing for the community.

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

Considering that the entire point of the ORC is to divest from the OGL, I think keeping chromatic dragons and ettercaps in Pathfinder Infinite going forward is going to be a much tougher sell. Maybe they'll figure something out! But I don't personally read it as being Paizo's fault. Paizo doesn't own chromatic dragons or ettercaps, Hasbro does, and Hasbro's made it clear that they are not trustworthy stewards.

Chromatic dragons and ettercaps are in the 5.1 SRD, which got released under Creative Commons. As far as I can tell there is no prohibition on using CC material on Infinite (or in an ORC release), so - I think - someone could do a 2e conversion of chromatic dragons or ettercaps either under ORC or on Infinite, provided they did it themselves and didn't just copy Paizo's OGL versions.

It would be tricky, cause ONLY the name and stat blocks are in the SRD, no lore, no infor, not even physical description. So you might need to make sure it doesn't look too much like the DnD ones... And as you would make completely different stat blocks for 5e... only the "name" would come from that SRD... xD

If you were doing a 5e product, WotC would not look at it very deep, but as it would be for their biggest competitor, they might look at it more closely.

Seriously... It's a "maybe you can", but at this point, it's probably not worth the efforts and the risks.
And Paizo licenses usually have "ultimatly, any legal problems caused by what you submit is your entire responsibility" clauses. Like the CUP itself mentions that if Paizo get sued because of your CUP content, you have to pay ALL legal fee Paizo would need to pay. xD I have not reread the Infinite license recently, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was something similar.

This is a welcomed update, but I'm sad that we *needed* this clarification and that without the community raising their voices, noone at Paizo would see how bad it was.

Ravien999 wrote:

This is a great move, but what about 1e content on infinite?

Today's announcement and action relate to the Community Use Policy and Fan Content Policy. We are continuing to monitor community feedback to changes to our other licenses and will share what information we can when it is available. Thanks for your patience and dedication to the Pathfinder and Starfinder communities.

So... still extinguished?

I mean, I don't know what further feedback from the community there could possibly be for Paizo to continue to monitor so, this pretty much sounds like a dead topic.

I mean... kudos for walking back the CUP changes. But fooey on sticking to your guns on accelerating the death of the things that aren't the new shiny.

Mark Moreland wrote:

Ravien999 wrote:

This is a great move, but what about 1e content on infinite?

Today's announcement and action relate to the Community Use Policy and Fan Content Policy. We are continuing to monitor community feedback to changes to our other licenses and will share what information we can when it is available. Thanks for your patience and dedication to the Pathfinder and Starfinder communities.

So... still extinguished?

I mean, I don't know what further feedback from the community there could possibly be for Paizo to continue to monitor so, this pretty much sounds like a dead topic.

I mean... kudos for walking back the CUP changes. But fooey on sticking to your guns on accelerating the death of the things that aren't the new shiny.

I think that's a bit of an apocalyptic stance to take. People are still mentioning it. You're still mentioning it. I simply think Paizo is rolling out the responses piecemeal, which definitely seems like a wise move to me after dumping multiple controversial ones at the same time turned out... Well, quite badly. I have faith they'll at the very least put out a written response to the OGL question, even if in the end they decide to go through with that change.

Anguish wrote:

Mark Moreland wrote:

Ravien999 wrote:

This is a great move, but what about 1e content on infinite?

Today's announcement and action relate to the Community Use Policy and Fan Content Policy. We are continuing to monitor community feedback to changes to our other licenses and will share what information we can when it is available. Thanks for your patience and dedication to the Pathfinder and Starfinder communities.

So... still extinguished?

I mean, I don't know what further feedback from the community there could possibly be for Paizo to continue to monitor so, this pretty much sounds like a dead topic.

I mean... kudos for walking back the CUP changes. But fooey on sticking to your guns on accelerating the death of the things that aren't the new shiny.

I think that's a bit of an apocalyptic stance to take. People are still mentioning it. You're still mentioning it. I simply think Paizo is rolling out the responses piecemeal, which definitely seems like a wise move to me after dumping multiple controversial ones at the same time turned out... Well, quite badly. I have faith they'll at the very least put out a written response to the OGL question, even if in the end they decide to go through with that change.

Per Mark's comments, let's break down how this plays out.

1} The community - us - accept this and move on. This is the most likely scenario. The current level of complaint has been achieved and rendered no retraction of the changes that impact PF1/SF1 on Infinite. Less complaint stands realistically no chance of impelling future change.

2} The community - us - maintain the same level of complaint. This is unlikely, but possible... though I'm sure it'll get those complaining written off as cranks if it hasn't already. Thing is... the current level of complaint is still unlikely to impel future change.

3} The community - us - suddenly start complaining a lot more. This is... highly unlikely, but who knows. Maybe there's a pocket of PF1/SF1 writers out there who just haven't heard the word or are standing by to see if miracles happen. This scenario could impel change, but again... is super unlikely to ever happen.

So yeah. Apocalyptic. PF1/SF1 on Infinite are extinct, or at the very least unable to breed.

There's no reason given Mark's "we're going to monitor community feedback" comment to think that means "and then suddenly do some more stuff that we just don't want to do at the same time as re-enabling CUP because... oh... reasons."

I don't pretend I'm a writer directly impacted by this. The closest I come is being a purchaser of some content that was going to be made available to me via Infinite and that author had to scramble to make alternate plans because surprise! license change announcement. But again, this does impact future purchasing plans.

Stuff

I do understand the concern. It's why I'm talking about it too, I want more than anything for 1e to be embraced and supported instead of taken out back even if I don't personally play it. I actually dropped my main defense of Paizo's potential splitting announcements from my earlier comment for brevity but I probably shouldn't have. This way, they don't need to wait for all the remaining lawyerly consulting to finish before patching up the biggest issues. They're for sure still working on the FCP, imagine if they waited until every little detail of that is sorted out before telling us that the CUP is back. If they're working on the 1e issue, which I admit is just speculation, it still makes more sense to deal with it separately from and later than the more immediately pressing issue. I personally take it on good faith that it is happening because in my opinion Paizo proved to be trustworthy enough to deserve that. Still, I try to make some noise about it so that it doesn't get forgotten.

don't bite that folks

3} The community - us - suddenly start complaining a lot more. This is... highly unlikely, but who knows. Maybe there's a pocket of PF1/SF1 writers out there who just haven't heard the word or are standing by to see if miracles happen. This scenario could impel change, but again... is super unlikely to ever happen.

I think you might find that those who are writers or other creators, probably don't want to be known as That Guy or That Gal... Just speculating! ;)

{. . .}

If I'd honestly thought Paizo were malicious (the way some other seaside-based companies are), I wouldn't have hung around making a fuss. I'd have jumped ship. I stayed because Paizo have repeatedly tried to do the right thing for the community, and clearly just screwed up this time.

I'm very relieved with this resolution, and particularly with the amount of extra work I don't need to do.

I didn't think they were malicious -- I thought they were doing this at legal gunpoint.

Thank you, Mark, and everyone at Paizo. This is immensely appreciated.

I'm still saddened about the loss of Paizo Infinite as a venue for 1e Pathfinder and Starfinder content, but that's far easier to understand (even if it remains challenging) than the revocation of the CUP.

I didn't think they were malicious -- I thought they were doing this at legal gunpoint.

As it happens, WotC backed down on the OGL changes that spawned any sort of legal gunpoint concept.

That's noteworthy because "what if they try again?"

Well...

They tried another unwanted change, got negative feedback, and backed down. And much faster than last time.

It's almost like they've learned not to alienate players.

Paizo put a lot of this into motion before WOTC backed down, and as a company, a vague assurance that "well, Hasbro probably won't try to nuke our entire business in the near future, since it would be bad PR" probably still isn't a good enough long-term guarantee. They aren't going to drop the ORC just because it's ostensibly no longer "necessary", and pivoting to the ORC means leaving the OGL behind.

UnArcaneElection wrote:

I didn't think they were malicious -- I thought they were doing this at legal gunpoint.

As it happens, WotC backed down on the OGL changes that spawned any sort of legal gunpoint concept.

That's noteworthy because "what if they try again?"

Well...

They tried another unwanted change, got negative feedback, and backed down. And much faster than last time.

It's almost like they've learned not to alienate players.

Obviously not since, well, they did it again.

I mean, if somebody pulled a gun on me for touching their toys and then said "Actually, no wait just kidding, I didn't mean it," I'd probably still pick up all my things and move to another room. Like, they don't have to still be holding the gun to my head to make me reconsider if I want to keep hanging out with them, even if I really liked a couple of the toys they were letting me use.

Them brandishing the gun at somebody else and apologising even faster would give me the opposite impression that they've learned not to point guns at people.

Yeah, like, what we've learned is that Hasbro really wants to consolidate control. I wouldn't gamble on that being forestalled forever by the threat of backlash. Paizo has no reason to take that bet on behalf of a system they aren't even working on anymore.

They did a whole Remaster to distance from D&D. They're not going to keep taking care of a D&D 3.0 hack if it's a potential legal liability.

Please see the following Paizo Announcements Forum post regarding the transition date for OGL content on Pathfinder and Starfinder Infinite.