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Does anyone else feel like Demiplane sucks? Why would Paizo partner with these guys? They are D&D Beyond for Pathfinder, and we are all watching in real time as D&D and D&D Beyond turn into a raging dumpster fire.
Making character building "pay to win" just generates rage in your customer base. I'm happy to pay for Pathbuilder & Starbuilder because the creator didn't limit the functionality of Pathbuilder for every option beyond the very basic. The app is actually useful to nonpaying players. So guys like me, who have the means to support the creator of the app, do so. And my players who can't (many of whom are kids with no job) can still enjoy the app.
Not so with Demiplane. If you want anything past bare bones, you are shoveling money at them. I don't want to buy the hardcopy from Paizo then buy the PDF from Piazo. Then buy it again on Demiplane. WTH?
I don't disagree with in the sense that Demiplane does not look like a product I would pay for.
I bought Pathbuilder for less than $5, and it's great for character building and doesn't have a reoccurring fee. And so far, as new books/content is added they're not charging for new sources, they just add it and it's available.
Why partner with Demiplane? I'm not sure.
There are several free (or non-reoccurring fee) options out there and they're not diminished by the existence of this option.
My suspicion is Demiplane probably asked Paizo to be able to use their IP and rules and paid Paizo some money, and Paizo can say something is officially supported. Maybe.
Ultimately the answer to your question is probably someone somewhere thought it would make money. Don't know if it was on the Paizo side or the Demiplane side, but someone saw an opportunity. At the end of the day they're businesses that need to make money to stay open.
Edit: Building on this thought, I think it's likely that Demiplane brought it to Paizo. Since they already had several game systems they supported, the basis was already there. Demiplane needed to write up the rules system, but that is probably relatively easy when they already have all the ancillary stuff to support several other rule systems. And it allows Demiplane to provide more options to existing users and potentially capture new users.
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I disagree with this one from a couple different directions.
The fact that it is similar to D&D Beyond likely is a win for recruiting people who are used to 5e, D&D Beyond is so baked in that not having something comparable is just another hurdle in bringing them over.
The second part is that I believe something like Demiplane can coexist with the others. Claxon mentioned how it didn't seem to take away from the free options and that matters. Paizo has a great track record of supporting the free options, but its okay to have a more premium version. I'm not a huge fan of Demiplane's character builder yet, though its been steadily getting better. However, their rules search works better for me than Nethys or PF2e Easy and when I want to read through the books on my tablet it is amazing. The reader on its own is so much better than scrolling PDFs especially when you are wanting to reference spells and abilities at the same time.
You can access pathfinder for free and not be missing out. But if a premium version is worth it for you? Then demiplane is great. That there is a cheap and easy way within to share your books with your tables can help a lot with splitting the costs.