Shmendrich's page

...Also you do understand Paizo is in the middle of a heated legal battle where another company stole an unbelievable amount of their product, and thereby revenue, right? It's no surprise this last year has seen company restructuring and cutting business agreements that were costing them money. That's not greed, that's trying to keep the lights on. I dislike these decisions as much as anyone else but it's an unfortunate part of running a business in a time like this. Are they the right decisions? Heck if I know, but it's plain to see the Diamond fiasco has completely upended their plans for some time now.

Paizo isn't some multibillion dollar company that can just keep pushing through Diamond/JP Morgan taking a significant amount of inventory like nothing happened.

This was part of my criticism.

I do not see how an agreement with AoN would cost them much (if any) money. Its as easy as signing a licensing contract/agreement of the sorts:

"AoN is free to publish Paizo content.
- This only applies to text, and images which meet the following requirements.
-- (List of requirements/guidelines of images AoN was allowed to use)
- This only applies to 2e.aonprd.com
- Newly published content, cannot be published at all until 2 natural months from the official date of release by Paizo.
- This licence is perpetual to any current and future content
- This licence can be rescinded by Paizo at any time, and without any reasoning or justification
- If this licence is rescinded, AoN will have 30 days to remove all content from their website
- Paizo can at any point and indiscriminately and at will exclude any content from this agreement. This will be done in the shape of an official request to AoN (By formal letter, or email), and AoN agrees to address and remove any such content in no less than 10 business days from the day of the request.
- AoN cannot directly nor indirectly profit from any content covered by this agreement. Any profits found to to breach this clause, will be surrendered to Paizo"

Plus/minus whatever legal jargon required. Of course the above is heavily simplified simply to provide a basic concept.

Of course I am no legal scholar, but I am fairly familiar with some contracts, including some I have handled (Some about art specifically), and of course I am somewhat familiar with the DnD OGL fiasco. And from my (limited) knowledge, there's no reason this would need to ever be touched again for years or even decades.

Yeah, Paizo also said AoN content led to some people thinking some images and other copyrighted content was FREE to be used. But...I mean...I just dont see how this affects Paizo's bottom line.

Piracy will always exist
People using Paizo content will always exist

To me this just reminds me of disney or nintendo suing a childcare center because they used an image of mario/mickey mouse. 99% of this "copyright infringement" Does not lead to any real losses. And yeah. I know Paizo is not nintendo, but they did mention them having to chase people for copyright infringement...and it just makes me wonder if Paizo is like nintendo in that regards, or if they are just chasing actual infringement which might actually hit their bottomline.

If Paizo wastes a lot of money chasing "copyright infringement" because a 17 year old kid used a picture of a Paizo character in their Twitch stream...Then thats just paizo not understanding reality in 2026.

And I am not saying Paizo is doing this. I do not know. But their statement does mention them spending money doing SOME form of copyright enforcement. And I just cant see how anything worth actual enforcement would come from AoN. And IF it did, just ask AoN to add a BIG "Copyright by Paizo. Please do not distribute" watermark to any and all picture/content. This would deter anyone not WILLINGLY breaking copyright. And if they are WILLINGLY breaking copyright, they can get the content from many sources other than AoN.

Shmendrich wrote:

By that extremely vague metric, any criticism is baiting.

I will say I agree with you that the definition is far too lose, and part of what takes time in my job as moderator here is reading and considering when something is just a valid criticism vs when something is actually trying to start a fight. There have been a LOT of valid criticisms about this decision, which is why the vast majority of those criticisms remain on our website and always will, even when we get new forums. I left an entire thread criticizing Demiplane with the purpose of summarizing that criticism and passing onto them so they can work on their UX. So, I just wanted to say I'm with you on this being pretty vague and open, and I use it as more of a place to start my analysis rather than an end all be all.

I want to preface my next paragraph by saying there is no malice in this at all! I am just stating the facts of the situation and want to give you a little more perspective in the hopes that it may help you understand why the post was considered baiting and why it had to be removed rather than edited!

I and my team have been working tirelessly at this company since I started. I myself am even still working through thousands of emails about this topic and taking in all that feedback so I can relay it to the team and we can take steps to not only regain goodwill but also make sure we have SOME kind of free resource that provides the benefits AoN did and does WHILE still doing my regular job. We also, as has been said, are working very hard to get our product back from Diamond while also still making new books at the same time.

We are regular nerds just like you doing the best we can. Hopefully you can understand how it could be seen as baiting to use the words "lazy" and "greedy" in this context. I absolutely understand also that you may still feel that way, and I'm not saying this to try to change your mind, but rather just to show you how it could be seen as baiting and explain why the post...

Well, that leaves me with nothing to go on. What I am reading here is "We have no clear definition for baiting, therefore, its baiting if I say so".

I also understand Paizo is in financial trouble, and that; as a roleplaying nerd is certainly disheartening. But I fail to see how the JP morgan horrible fiasco is at all related to AoN. And I already explained why I dont see how AoN's licence would cost much (if any) money/maintenance to Paizo. I could certainly be wrong. I am not a licencing expert. And if I am wrong, maybe I would have found out while discussing in that post.

And look...I understand the world is not black and white, and I understand moderation is hard. But I also KNOW my criticism was not intended to start a FIGHT, but rather to start a dialogue about it from my point of view. And yeah, my point of view included a harsh critique. Of that I am fairly aware. That was intended because I am heavily disappointed with this decision made by Paizo. And I expected to see both points of view in that discussion, people both agreeing or disagreeing with me. I do not see disagreement as "baiting"

Harsh criticism is not on its own baiting. Harsh criticism can be fair, or unfair, depending on what one is criticising and what is the critique.
Think of what you consider a real bad movie, and tell me "harsh criticism" of that movie would count as baiting. (IE: Avatar: The last air bender). I can use word such as "lazy" for the writing, or "greedy" for the budget, and it does not mean I am baiting anyone or anything.

Anyways...This post I think has reached a point where going any deeper would be meaningless.

Your opinion of "baiting" is different from mine, and you are the person with power here.

Although I will say I certainly commend and appreciate your responses on this post. We clearly disagree, but I commend you are open to questions and even criticism about moderation. Even if I disagree with how it was applied.

Cheers, and thanks for your attention.

Shmendrich wrote:

Giving my honest opinion along with some background for it is "baiting"?

The definition of "baiting" here is 1a from Merrian-Webster: "to try to make angry with criticism or insults." On the Internet some people bait just to get other people angry enough to respond. It is trollish behavior. Shmendrich's opinion reveals an unhappy view of life that does not fit Paizo's actual background.

Declaring Paizo employees greedy and lazy is unjustified. I recommend reading their history, such as Paizo Publishing's 10th Anniversary Retrospective—Year 0 (2002)—The Thrill of Starting Something New, Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4, Year 5, Year 6, Year 7, Year 8, Year 9, and...

By that extremely vague metric, any criticism is baiting.

I agree Paizo has been great for years. I never contested that. I loved Paizo when it came out. DnD4 was not good, and PF1 did great, it gave us the DnD 3.6 we needed.

Same way I loved blizzard when they made Warcraft 1-3, Starcraft 1-2. But companies change. Blizzard today is not the same one it was back then. And Paizo doesnt seems to be either.

June 8, 2026, when CEO Jim Butler announced a major restructuring and a reduction in workforce.

Not even 2 months later, they are already doing anti-player changes such as this with Archive of nethys. About 1 year since the new administration came in. Which to me seems to indicate a core change in how Paizo is handled from the top down.

As to why I called them lazy, that comes from their justification for this change. If you have read it, it boils down to the following points:

- They claim maintaining this arrangement with AoN is somehow too difficult, complicated and expensive.
- They claim it makes their IP's permissions and ownership confusing (As in: some people think they can use assets from AoN)

And...I just dont see either of those making any sense. Yeah, I can see some people reusing some images or assets from AoN where as they themselves do not have permission, but that will happen regardless. People will scan books or copy images from the PDFs.
Legal agreements do not change every few months to require a full legal team to review. These arrangements are usually done once. (For example, DnD's OGL). So that doesn't make any sense either.

To me that seems to indicate a lack of understanding of players and the way we consume Paizo's products.

I could go into more detail of my argument again, but since I still do not know what made my post count as "Baiting" then I better play it safe and not repeat much of my argument.

It's not against the rules to discuss dissenting opinions nor is it against the rules to publicly discuss moderation decisions. If you look at my posts, I've welcomed discussion for moderation decisions, and as said previously in this thread, the multiple threads about the AoN discussion are proof enough that discussing it isn't against the rules.

Your post was removed for baiting! As always, if you ever have any questions about why a post or comment was removed, you can ask me here publicly or in DMs! I value myself in being as transparent as they come!

Giving my honest opinion along with some background for it is "baiting"?

All I discussed was my reasoning/story to move away from DnD/WotC, to compare it to what I see as the same (currently emerging) pattern of behavior in Paizo.

I am expressing my frustration regarding that anti-player pattern of behaviour, in the desire that the relevant people at Paizo see why SOME people might have started playing PF2, and what might keep or scare them away from it.

I honestly do not see how this is "baiting"

The worst words/statements I used were "Lazy" and "Greedy".
If those are now here categorized as insults or unacceptable, then I would recommend the new rules to be clear about that.

I recently moved from DnD to PF2, partially and mainly because of WotC's greedy practices.

One of the reasons I chose PF2 was precisely because of Archive of Nethys, and how open Paizo seemed to be compared to WotC. Now I see its in the same ugly greedy direction as DnD.

Its an small change, but it certainly shows a shift on the way Paizo handles its IP and in the way it sees its users and customers.

I regularly use archive of nethys. But I also have:
- All the physical core books
- Multiple physical adventure books
- Multiple digital adventure books
- All the digital core books

And I recently purchased the humble bundle Dawn of the frogs to increase the size of my physical and digital collection.

Archive of nethys does not keep players from buying your stuff. Quite the contrary, it encourages it. And you guys going greedy on them and trying to take down some of their content (images and most recent content) is honestly the actions of someone who doesnt understands nor cares about their customers.

A couple days ago I made a post criticizing the recent change to abandon Paizo's support for Archive of Nethys.

I dont believe I broke any rule, and yet my post was deleted without any feedback or message.

Is it now against the rules to discuss the topic?
Or to criticize paizo?