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Thanks for your feedback! Paizo has a relationship with Foundry. If they want to review our products they should contact me directly. But a subscription would accomplish the same thing because I don't send review copies our earlier than that. That said, understand that we will always give the "best deal" to licensed partners. Foundry's business model prevents us from working with them quite like we do with other partners, but it can still be a good relationship.
Adventures Ahead!
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Hi Aaron,
Thank you for your frank response. I'll be sure to let the guys know they can get in touch with you regarding the review copies. As for the way Foundry works, unlike other VTTs Foundry lets you create your own products (without owing Foundry any royalties) - it's easily the most transparant VTT out there.
*edit*: It's been brought to my attention that it might not be entirely clear that the PF2e developer team on Foundry are volunteers who aren't associated with Foundry itself. And that there might already be communications going there. So that's lovely news, I hope that gets expanded on! /edit
I feel there's some communication that can be smoothed over regarding Foundry, PF2e (support) and rollout of products on that platform. I'd like to strongly encourage you to get in touch with 'nikolaj-a#7082' on discord. He's the volunteer that creates the PF2e game-system on Foundry. Alex and Luis are already on their discord, perhaps they can help get that communication started.
What I'm hoping this will achieve, as a user is a wider rollout of Foundry supported products by Paizo. Which I'll happily pay you guys for. Think things like a bestiary with art & tokens, fully implemented modules and campaigns, the works.
I think working with them (the volunteers) will help Paizo make tremendous steps towards unprecedented VTT support that even WOTC can't rival. You've got an amazing asset in these volunteers; I encourage you to leverage that.
Yours,
Daniel
Thanks. Context. I am the sole Paizo marketing employee, other than the VP of Marketing and Licencing who makes the high level decisions. When we re-hire the Marketing Coordinator there will be two of us. Two of us to promote over 150 products a year. Two of us to work with dozens of licensed partners. Two us to work with community content creators, influencers, Compatible and Infinite publishers, and manage social media. Generally, it is in that order of importance because that how the revenue flows.
We can't "play favorites" by putting one licensed VTT partner over another and we certainly can't put an unlicensed organization over them. They all have to compete with each other on the even playing field we create.
So, the ball is in Foundry's court to support our rollouts, not the over way around, because there is no revenue stream that flows directly to us from them and are there are no additional resources to allocate to their growth.
That said, we are experimenting with making their product available on our store. But we have to do all that work ourselves. So that program will grow, if we see that it will pay for itself. That decision will be made above me.
I'm sorry to show you how the sausage is made, but that is what these forums are for, I suppose.
Adventures Ahead!
So, something I'd like to point out: Having a watermark doesn't mean the copy is legit, so it's not exactly a watertight security measure. An actual check would be pinging some sort of API that verifies that the user owns the PDF.
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I am answering your questions in hopes that the Foundry Community sees this thread and better understands the situation.
Store page referral links are planned and need to be implemented for licensed partners first.
We provide high res images and API access to licensed partners. PDFs are better resolution than they use to be but we won't supply 300 dpi, aka print quality. Digital piracy is bad enough in this industry. Providing commercial print quality would be even worse.
Foundry does not want to be a licensed partner.
We have Org Play data showing which VTT each GM chooses as one indicator of popularity/market share.
I believe Foundry is in direct contact with our Director of Licensing, Director of Brand Strategy and VP of Marketing and Licensing. I'll share your thoughts with them.
We are working on bringing more Foundry products to our site. But this requires addition labor and work-flows on our part, because Foundry does not have a store of its own. When we put product on our site, all our VTT partners want the same visibility. We need to provide an even playing field.
The way I see it, the Foundry business model, based on the free Community Use Policy and volunteer labor is a threat against our VTT licensed partners. I don't have decision-making authority, but the need for sensitivity is clear. Foundry may be better for some players, but I am not certain it is better for Paizo or the community as a whole. The Foundry Community seems to be asking for the benefits of licensed partner access, without being willing to pay for them, because Foundry is a disruptive technology.
Creating more VTT play at a smaller profit margin is one possible marking strategy. But so is offering premium VTT play, at smaller quantities, with a higher rate of return. One takes Pathfinder in the direction of a mass-consumer product. The other takes it towards a high-end niche product. Both are valid. Leadership has choices to make.
Cheers!
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One of the Foundry PF2e volunteer devs here. We appreciate the support from the community but we do understand Paizo's dilemma, and don't want to cause problems or headaches. Foundry does not have the same business model as the other VTTs, and for many of us that is why we like it so much. But Paizo has relationships with other companies that need to be maintained, and Foundry's business model makes that a finer tightrope to balance on.
In the end we all love PF2e and Paizo and that's why we do the work that we do. The PF2e Foundry team is affiliated with neither Paizo nor Foundry. We do not want special treatment, and while we would like to see things like high quality art we understand both the position of Paizo and Foundry. We don't want to enable piracy, we just want to keep working toward building the VTT system that we all want to play on.
Remember, regardless of whether you play your games in person, or on Foundry, Roll20, FGU, Astral, D20Pro, Talespire, Owlbear Rodeo, or any of the other VTTs out there: First and foremost we are all fans of PF2e, and while we certainly share your enthusiasm for Foundry we ask that you be respectful and remember that we are all playing the same game.
If you want to show your support for the PF2e Foundry team then be positive about Foundry instead of negative about other VTTs, buy a Paizo PDF and tweet about running it with Foundry, buy the Battlezoo Bestiary Foundry module when it releases (Kickstarter has ended now). Definitely don't make life harder for Aaron, who we all like.
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If they had an official License then their users would need to pay for all of those materials instead of relying on free materials made by volunteers... and that's pretty much 90% of the draw for Foundry, it's inexpensive because it leverages user made materials via the community use policy.
Moving away from, and forcing the removal of, all existing materials for PF2 would be disastrous and drive users away, not onto the platform.
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Foundry is not in the business of making a walled garden of content with them as the sole gatekeeper. Just because it doesn't mirror the R20/FGU model doesn't change the fact there is real demand for the products on arguably the most advanced and feature-packed VTT.
Kobold Press, Modiphus, and Cubicle7 are all selling Premium content without any trouble so it's baffling that Paizo just drops a "they don't want to be a licensed partner so welp" and moves on.
To clarify, Paizo recognizes the popularity of Foundry for some players is not moving on or away from the platform. I just don’t have anything I can announce yet.
I believe I understand who Foundry is and why they don’t want to be licensed partners. I just want the community to understand the complexities of the situation.
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Hey Aaron, Andrew - creator of Foundry Virtual Tabletop here. I appreciate your engagement in this thread, although in the interest of preventing any alarm or confusion within our shared community I have some additional details I'd like to add. I thought it worthwhile to weigh in here to try and share perspective.
As you correctly point out, Foundry Virtual Tabletop is differently structured than the other businesses that Paizo partners with. We don't sell 3rd party content in a managed marketplace - instead we prefer to partner with publishers like Paizo and make it as easy as possible for them to create and sell their own content designed for Foundry VTT. We recognize this adds some complexity to the process of publishing material - but we also believe that it offers publishers a number of big advantages in terms of producing their own products and retaining revenue from those products.
Foundry Virtual Tabletop and Paizo do have an official standing relationship as content partners, as announced several months ago. Through this relationship, Paizo has created and published several products designed specifically for Foundry VTT which are available for purchase in your web store.
As for the original topic of whether it's possible for the PF2e community development team for FVTT to get early access to products, I can understand how that would be useful to them - but also completely understand how that is a privilege typically given to conventional "licensed partners" who pay for the rights to sell Paizo products themselves. Aaron's also perfectly correct about the risks of releasing full print resolution images in unprotected ways. We work tirelessly to protect the rights of publishers and do our best to prevent the use of our platform for copyright infringement.
I must admit a little confusion regarding your comment that...
Thanks for the clarification. There is relationship between Paizo and Foundry. It is unique to Foundry because the business model is unique. Paizo wants to see that continue, and if I implied otherwise I regret it and apologize. I’m frustrated by the Foundry Community attacking my social media posts promoting Roll20 and let it get to me. I appreciate your time.
For what it's worth I bought the entire Age of Ashes and Extinction Curse PDFs outside of my subscription to have the ease of importing them to Foundry via module support. I'll probably wind up buying PFS 2e Season 1 for the same reason. I would imagine there are a number of people who have done the same.
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I don't know - can't know - about others, but I'm certainly willing to pay for someone doing the work for me, in Foundry.
I've done so repeatedly, having bought material from Cubicle 7, Free League, Pinnacle Entertainment, Ulisses Spiele, etc. And, yes, even Paizo. I strongly suspect I'm not the only one that bought the Bounties simply to send a signal to Paizo, as there's pretty much zero chance of me ever using them.
I certainly wouldn't have bought any of the pdfs I've recently purchased on the Paizo store if it wasn't available on Foundry. (I own/have accounts on several other VTTs (FG, roll20, etc) that I've tried for the last decade or so, and they just aren't for me, for various reasons.)
I wouldn't mind paying for them 'again' in a high-quality Foundry format, but, make no mistake, you have already made sales to me that simply would not have happened if PF2 Foundry support wasn't as good as it is. (If international shipping wasn't crazy expensive, you'd even have sold physical books to me. But, alas, as a european, the days of subscribing to Paizo books are pretty much over.)
Anyway, you all make good stuff. Keep doing that. :)
/Jonas
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PDFs are better resolution than they use to be but we won't supply 300 dpi, aka print quality. Digital piracy is bad enough in this industry. Providing commercial print quality would be even worse.
Huge thanks for the improvement you guys have done so far, particularly in the Interactive Maps PDFs. It has made a VTT play much better. No more suffering with SNES graphics pixelated maps.
Obviously, we'd love to get access to the full DPI quality of the fantastic maps & character art your artists produce, but the piracy issue is well understood. Hopefully something can be figured out that is value add for all parties.
Foundry is the way to go for PF2E and it's the only VTT I will use personally.
I buy all my products as actual books but I was buying PDFs to use with foundry even though I owned the actual books and had no need for the PDFs other than to import into Foundry which did require a legitimate copy.
The lockdown is over so I don't use Foundry anymore but I wouldn't consider any other VTT and if I had to play online again I would gladly buy more PDFs from Paizo to use them in Foundry.