Pathfinder Is in Serious Trouble & I Don't Think We're Getting More Games

[00:08] This time bringing you some, I would say, less than cheery news. As it appears to me that Pathfinder video games, and in fact the Pathfinder TTRPG, the video game side in particular, I think things look especially dire for

[00:23] any potential future releases. Now, this is interesting because I've sort of been past year and a half. But it reached a bit of a head yesterday, which is why I decided to finally make a video on it because I personally cover the video

[00:36] game side of these things. And most of it thus far has been purely confined to the TTRPG space. But like I said, got some news yesterday that this is looking uh bad bad and I felt like it needed to be covered. So, the long and short of it

[00:51] is that Piso, the company that holds the IP for the Pathfinder franchise, is in some serious trouble as of late, as are many TTRPG companies for reasons we'll to itself a bit of a head at the beginning of June when they had to start

[01:06] doing layoffs, followed by just yesterday cutting ties with a long-standing partnership with uh the Archives of Nethus. And all of that is again mostly on the TTRPG side of things. However, it's gotten to a point

[01:19] now where with the TTRPG industry being what it is and the games industry being in the state that it's in and the fact that all of our Pathfinder games come from licensing agreements with Piso and I just really don't see any of that

[01:32] actually want for the foreseeable well be wondering about the three games that are currently in development licensed from Piso. And we'll talk about those here in just a few. But in order

[01:45] to properly explain what is going on here, I first need to start at the beginning. And that technically did start in January of 2025. Now, January of 2025 was a bit of an Armageddon of sorts for small TTRPG companies and even

[02:00] some larger ones, in fact, because a distributor known as Diamond Comic Distributors declared bankruptcy. This was a very important company for this space that was handling a lot of inventory. When they declared

[02:13] bankruptcy, much of their stock and assets were caught up in the legal proceedings that followed, leaving the company that actually owned that stock, because Diamond was just a distributor, unable to make any money, as they quite

[02:25] literally could not move or claim their own inventory. So, in Piso's case in particular, they worked with Diamond as a consignment arrangements. Piso owned actually distribute it, and then they made money on the sales and everything,

[02:39] and so did many other people. This was not unusual. A lot of people had an arrangement with Diamond, uh, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, all them as well. And in many ways, this company was a bit of a gatekeeper for TTRBG companies and

[02:53] there to the world. When this happened and all of that inventory became inaccessible to basically everybody, Piso has said to have had like $10 million worth of products in Diamond's possession that they could not access.

[03:08] This was the case for Piso and many others for basically all of 2025. Now, in early 2026, a judge struck down the exclusivity agreement that kept them from finding a different distributor. That was also tied up in some legal

[03:22] processes that slowed the entire thing down. And basically, for like a solid year plus, Piso couldn't sell any of that inventory. And they obviously had to sort of start from scratch and look for other avenues. And even with the

[03:35] exclusivity agreement ended, they don't have access to that inventory still. And that came to a head at the beginning of June of this year, 2026, when we got some official numbers from Piso themselves. Though obviously, we don't

[03:48] know the exact amounts, but basically Piso is saying that they probably lost roughly 2 million plus another half million that they wrote off from not having access to this roughly $10 million worth of inventory. As a result

[04:02] everything. They ultimately laid off about a dozen people and things were not like they were actually a little more desperate than that would have initially led you to believe because just yesterday, from the time of this video,

[04:15] they cut their licensing agreement with the archives of Nethus. This is essentially just a website that would take the many, many rules of Pathfinder and Starfinder and put them all in one place for people to find and access from

[04:29] the upcoming releases via this partnership on day one. So, this would added by new rule books and things in terms of actual game mechanics. Now, it the stories or the adventures themselves, which is important because a

[04:44] lot of what Pathfinders modules and adventure paths were really all about was the quality of those overall compared to something like D&D's interesting stories in my opinion, provided you like the system well

[04:58] enough, I suppose. Now, the reasons stated that they did this were that the archives of Nethus through this licensing partnership was simply not bringing in any royalties at all to Piso. But the reason for that is pretty

[05:11] straightforward because that is not how Archives of Nethus has ever operated. Archives of Nethus is not like a for-profit business. Their goal was to get donations to simply keep the servers active and run the actual website. They

[05:24] this. it was simply meant to be a community resource. And so after 8 years of that to suddenly uh terminate this partnership because it's not making any money is a little foolish given that was clearly never what it was designed to do

[05:39] to begin with. Now I from here do have to make some assumptions about the intent of Piso's leadership, but keep in mind I'm sure they would spin it their own way. My guess here is that they have gotten so desperate for sales and trying

[05:51] to rebuild and come out of this very uh tense moment by trying to make sure that they get the sales from people who want to see the rules from this stuff day one. Because keep in mind, them ending this partnership with the Archives of

[06:04] Nethus doesn't actually prevent that website from posting like rules and stuff. It just means that they won't be accessed day one. They also cannot use the official art that isn't compliant with their community rules. And then

[06:16] from now on, they're going to have to actually buy those source books and stuff themselves out of pocket to post all of the information and everything up there for everyone to see. So, I would imagine what Piso is hoping would happen

[06:29] here is that they get access to the sales that they think they are losing by somebody looking up the rules from these new rule books on this website. But I think this is a very poor long-term decision simply because it erodess

[06:41] customer trust for starters, but also uh Pathfinder especially as a sort of TTRPG has a very scattered rule set. There are just tons and tons of books that have

[06:53] everything. And while you get the core of it from the core rule book, of people might want to play with is scattered across all of these different places. and the Archives of Nethus was really the only place you can look for

[07:06] all of that stuff in one place. And because of that, as a sort of unified the Archives of Nethus was probably putting more people onto Pathfinder than whatever sales Piso thinks they're losing. And not to mention, again, the

[07:21] to deal with from ending this partnership. But all of that is just the TTRPG side of things. Feel however you want about it. That's just sort of the situation as it stands. Piso is struggling. That is undeniable. They are

[07:34] trying to avoid going out of business at this point and they are making decisions like this to feed into that. And so if you have a company that is so desperate agreements with a website that was never trying to make a profit to begin with

[07:48] and you've known that for the last 8 years, I think it's safe to say that the chances of them looking outward to license their IP into video games when the games industry is also in a really rough place is uh low at best for a

[08:02] starters, we don't necessarily know the agreements of every single licensing agreement they have, like the stipulations and responsibilities of each individual agreement are going to be different. But obviously, Piso is

[08:15] agreements as a business. And with the games industry being what it is, and games under normal circumstances being really hard to, I would say, turn a profit a lot of the times right now means you've got extra layers of that to

[08:28] make a game, but you've also got to be able to cover whatever your licensing agreement with Piso is. And Piso themselves, as a struggling business, may or may not be here in the future to continue licensing that IP. So, you're

[08:41] signing yourself up for this perilous situation in my opinion by uh doing any of this. So, if you're somebody like Owlcat Games, who has definitely made the most popular of the Pathfinder video games, you have to sit down and ask

[08:54] want to get involved in, especially if stuff going on that's honestly doing better than Pathfinder ever did for them, even though Pathfinder did do well for them. And while I am obviously not

[09:06] privy to the business decisions Alcat chooses to make, I cannot imagine personally signing up for an agreement with Piso right now. You would obviously want them to write this ship before you even started considering something like

[09:20] that. And I think that is going to take a significant period of time and we'll see if Piso makes it out of that at all. So just right there in terms of any new games being uh signed off on or green lit. Obviously we don't know for sure

[09:33] take that and then you talk about the games that are already in development. You see you may well have noticed Pathfinder isn't exactly known for its blockbuster video games. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and its earlier

[09:46] predecessor, Kingmaker are by far the biggest of all of them. And yet, there are actually uh three other games from Piso's IP that are currently being developed. And I think those games are also going to struggle, which I think is

[10:01] just going to ultimately reinforce the idea of not doing one of these partnerships. if you're another company looking to of course make a game, especially Alcat, who we all naturally still want a CRPG from. So, let's talk a

[10:14] little bit about those. There are two Pathfinder and one Starfinder video games currently in development. All three of them were Kickstarter projects. They are in various states of being done, but for ease, let's talk about the

[10:27] Starfinder one first. This was Kickstarted towards the end of last year in 2025. They had obviously done some work prior to that. They did some play supposed to hit an early access release sometime this year before the year is

[10:40] out if they are still on track. Now the problem with this game is that it's a bit of a niche within a niche. I really enjoy this kind of thing. I hope it does interesting, but it's also going to be a relatively small and scope game from an

[10:53] IP not a lot of people are familiar with as Starfinder is certainly not as rules are pretty much the same and it is primarily a sort of setting swap if you will. It's also from an relatively unknown developer. And while there's a

[11:07] lot of potential there, you've got people like Neil Nubon doing some of the And there's some hope that that game does well, I think it's going to suffer what happens with it and if it turns out to be successful, especially over the

[11:22] sort of a long-term thing regardless. And then there are the other two Pathfinder projects. The first one has been uh I would say behind for quite some time and this is Pathfinder Abomination Vaults. This is an ARPG.

[11:36] Think like Diablo, Path of Exile, all that kind of thing, which you may well be thinking that's an odd adaptation to make for a TTRPG, and you would be correct in thinking so. In fact, I would imagine that people like myself who both

[11:49] really love Pathfinder and also that type of ARPG isn't necessarily the largest cross-section of people, which means I have uh doubts about how far wasn't for Kickstarter, this game

[12:02] all. But it's also been on a pretty glacial pace since then. So, the Kickstarter for this was back in 2023. They were initially hoping to be out in 2025. They were just having play tests themselves earlier this year. And while

[12:17] they are still communicating fairly regularly, it's pretty obvious that this going to probably come in a bit over budget. And unless this one just really blows people away, I think the potential market here is relatively small for

[12:30] this. Then however, you've got Pathfinder: The Dragon's Demand. A very cool title to me personally, but admittedly again kind of niche ones. So, this game is a CRPG, but it is doing it through the lens of miniatures. So,

[12:44] which have different types of like animations and everything to really try to highlight like the tactical elements of the Pathfinder system as you would imagine. And there is certainly more to it. I've covered it myself here and

[12:57] think the sort of miniature art style and everything is going to make it again a bit more of a niche product even if I think it's really cool. And it's another situation where I think Kickstarter is really the reason this is getting made.

[13:11] And so when you start bringing all of those together, you've got Piso, the IP holder who is really struggling, the entire games industry who's struggling, but also the three games that are in development are waiting to be seen in

[13:24] wind up being and if that's something you might actually want to take a gamble on, especially given the IP holders precarious situation financially. and suddenly you've just got a lot of barriers between you and a Pathfinder

[13:38] video game, let alone a CRPG that I would really want. And so, unless a company with a surprisingly great background comes in and tries to get some sweetheart licensing deal cuz they always wanted to make a Pathfinder game,

[13:51] I just don't see how this happens. Like obviously it could potentially there's always that like one ina million chance but just with everything going on and the entire situation around all of these industries the video games etc. I just

[14:05] you would want making these games the most is Owlcat. They're also working with the expanse now. They've got Dark Heresy coming. Rogue Traders a fantastic game all on its own. They don't even own the rights to Kingmaker anymore. And so

[14:18] again, just the one company you would want to potentially take up that mantle to. And that's before you even start talking about all their other they're working on. And thus, long story short, the hope for a Pathfinder video

[14:33] game is bleak. I simply don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. I think you would need at least a couple of years period for both the TTRPG space as well as the video game space to hopefully normalize. And even then,

[14:47] assuming that went perfectly and they got somebody signed up immediately, it develop. And then whether or not you'd have somebody do that depends on the success of, I would say, several niche titles. Sort of proving the approach.

[14:59] And if I'm being real honest, I don't think a couple of them will be in terms of like blockbuster hits or anything like that. I think making an okay profit is a pretty lofty goal for all three of them. And so, as much as I really don't

[15:11] like the news, especially following the recent news, that Pillars of Eternity is probably also on ice for the foreseeable future, that is to say, the world of Aora, that universe at large. And it's definitely a gigantic bummer all around,

[15:24] but just being real, I just don't see a situation where we get, say, a Pathfinder CRPG. But to sum it up as succinctly as I can, this sucks, but I don't think we're getting any Pathfinder video games for quite some time, several

[15:38] years at best. discounting the three that are currently being worked on. But successful enough to warrant any follow-ups. But as always, we will ultimately see what the years ahead bring. But given my love of all things

[15:50] Pathfinder, I figured I might as well go ahead and make this video. Now, for anyone who might have still been holding out hope, I suppose. But that is pretty certainly hope you enjoyed the video, I guess. Feel free to hit the like button

[16:03] I would be curious to hear everyone's thoughts on this. And with that in mind, certainly feel free to like, comment, subscribe, all that YouTube jazz. But regardless of any of that, truly just thank you so much for watching. I really

[16:16] do appreciate it. May you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day.