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This is a copy of a post I made on the Pathfinder 2e subreddit. I wanted to bring the topic here to hear the opinions of fans outside the US. I apologize if this isn’t the right place for this kind of post.:
I'm writing this mostly to vent about the current state of Paizo's publications in Spain, especially Starfinder, though Pathfinder is also affected. For years now, we've been suffering under the inflexible grip of Devir, the publishing company responsible for releasing Pathfinder here. Since 1e, the Spanish editions have been plagued with serious translation issues, occasional printing mistakes, and a staggeringly small amount of published content compared to the original English material. The latter is somewhat understandable from a commercial standpoint, as TTRPGs are still a niche hobby here, and Pathfinder is relatively unknown compared to more popular franchises in Spain and Latin America.
But Starfinder has had it even worse. It's already seen as a kind of "DLC" or secondary product compared to Pathfinder, and many mistakes have been made in its handling. Not long ago, I bought physical Starfinder books with blatant translation errors, some of which still haven’t been corrected to this day.
Then came Pathfinder 2e, then the Remaster, and now Starfinder 2e. And here’s the real reason I’m writing this semi-rant: To publish Starfinder 2e in Spanish, Devir has launched a sort of crowdfunding initiative called “Devir 500” which means the game will only be printed if it reaches 500 preorders.
With absolutely zero marketing and a deadline of July 31, 2025, the current number of preorders is only 165 out of 500.
The Spanish publisher has made very little effort to win back the public, fix their past mistakes with Paizo’s product lines, or even promote any of this new content properly. And now, with this pseudo-crowdfunding for Starfinder 2e, I can’t help but wonder if Devir actually has any real intention of publishing the game or if they're just trying to set up an excuse to later say “There’s no interest” and quietly drop the line without technically losing the rights to Pathfinder and Starfinder.
From what I know, many fans in Spain (not sure about Latin America) are incredibly frustrated with how these games have been handled. I believe some have even tried to reach out to Paizo directly to address the situation.
This creates a real problem: players who don’t speak enough English to comfortably use Paizo’s original material are stuck with a company that barely publishes anything, does so with a lack of quality control, and shows no clear commitment to supporting the line. It feels like they expect the product to sell itself.
Let me be clear: I understand there are people behind Devir, and I have no issue forgiving honest human mistakes. But the way Pathfinder and Starfinder have been treated, like second-rate products, is disappointing, especially when Devir’s real focus seems to be on board games, which likely bring in most of their revenue.
Is there hope?
Has anyone outside the U.S. had similar experiences?
Translation errors and not correcting mistakes are indeed serious problems, but I'm not sure there's anything wrong with tying a print run to a pre-order goal - the odds are very good that they need a minimum of that many books for the order to make financial sense for them.
I'm not sure about the printing situation in Spain, but I know that for many TTRPG people in America, printing costs went up as much as 8x during COVID and never came back down. A situation where Devir pays for a bulk order of Starfinder books that might not actually sell to the relatively niche market they cater to could be disastrous; the pre-orders help them be sure demand is actually there.
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I wish I'd seen this topic earlier, but I rarely come into the forums anymore. I'd like to chime in.
The Devir editions are, quite frankly, bad. The translations seem to be given little to no care, and the editions appear to be a rush job. But more importantly, I don't think they do much, if any, work at promoting the system. Yes, the Spanish-speaking market both in Spain and Latin America is a lot smaller than the English market, but for the Spanish editions to be virtually unheard-of in Latam? I travel a lot for work, and in the past five years I can't remember seeing a single copy of a Devir-published Paizo book anywhere in Latin America. Even in Spain, visiting several LGS' across Madrid and Barcelona over a period of a month, I think I saw maybe two stores that had any of their Pathfinder/Starfinder books. They did have other Devir products, just no Paizo ones.
I don't know if it's because they stopped trying to promote the systems, or because they never really cared, but it feels like a case of "we tried nothing and it didn't work". Which would be a shame.