Paizo Publishing
(originally Paizo Publishing) is an American role-playing game publishing company based in Redmond, Washington, best known for the tabletop role-playing games Pathfinder and Starfinder. The company's name is derived from the Greek word which means 'I play' or 'to play'. Paizo also runs an online retail store selling role-playing games, board games, comic books, toys, clothing, accessories and other products, as well as an internet forum community.
Also recorded as Paizo Inc. · Paizo
Paizo Publishing
- Name
- Paizo Inc.
- Founded
- 2002
- Founder
- Lisa Stevens
- Headquarters
- Redmond
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(originally Paizo Publishing) is an American role-playing game publishing company based in Redmond, Washington, best known for the tabletop role-playing games Pathfinder and Starfinder. The company's name is derived from the Greek word which means 'I play' or 'to play'. Paizo also runs an online retail store selling role-playing games, board games, comic books, toys, clothing, accessories and other products, as well as an internet forum community.
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In this article
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Paizo Inc. • Founded — 2002 • Founders — * Lisa Stevens • Vic Wertz • Johnny Wilson • Country — United States • Headquarters — Redmond, Washington • Distribution — Diamond Book Distributors (until 2026) Independent Publishers Group (2026-) • Keypeople — * Lisa Stevens (Advisory CEO) • Jim Butler (President) • Publications — Role-playing games, board games, books • Genre — science fiction, fantasy • Website — http: paizo.com
History
History
Paizo was formed by Lisa Stevens, Vic Wertz, and Johnny Wilson in 2002 to take over the publication of the Dungeons & Dragons magazines Dragon and Dungeon, formerly published in-house by Wizards of the Coast. Paizo publisher Erik Mona is the former editor-in-chief of Dragon, while former editor-in-chief of Dungeon James Jacobs oversees the Pathfinder periodicals. The company started producing a bimonthly magazine called Undefeated in 2003, and in 2004, resurrected the venerable science fiction title Amazing Stories. The two publications were placed on hiatus in 2005, and finally canceled in 2006. In early 2007, Wizards of the Coast announced it would not renew Paizo's license to publish Dragon and Dungeon, leaving a five-year run from September 2002 to September 2007. Paizo has subsequently began the periodical Pathfinder Adventure Path, which continues the concept featured in Dungeon of monthly installments of adventures that tell a self-contained story. These Adventure Paths are set in the world of Golarion, the official Pathfinder campaign setting. Paizo announced on March 18, 2008 that they would be launching the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Through the new product line, Paizo would modify and update the System Reference Document version 3.5 under the terms of Wizards of the Coast's Open Game License. The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game would also support Paizo's Pathfinder campaign setting. In March 2008, Paizo also announced that it was introducing an organized play program called "Pathfinder Society Organized Play". The program was loosely modeled on the RPGAs "Living" campaigns. Additional products in the Pathfinder line include Pathfinder modules and Pathfinder Tales novels. In May 2016, Paizo announced a new space fantasy role-playing game, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, released in August 2017. It is set in a possible future of the Pathfinder setting where Golarion has disappeared. In May 2018, Paizo announced it was working on a second edition of Pathfinder to refine elements of the rule set to reflect feedback and clarification on the original system over the prior years. The preliminary ruleset was published in August 2018 as Pathfinder Playtest so that players could test out and provide feedback. The final rule set was released on August 1, 2019. On June 15, 2020, Paizo announced CEO Lisa Stevens was going to step down from daily operations in preparation for her retirement. Other Paizo products include the Titanic Games line of board games such as Kill Doctor Lucky, and the Planet Stories line of classic fantasy, science fiction and science fantasy novels. • Illustration — Alex Speidel (3rd from right) of the United Paizo Workers and other grassroot union organizers meet with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in May 2022 On October 14, 2021, an organization representing over 30 Paizo employees announced the formation of the United Paizo Workers, a labor union allied with the Communications Workers of America, becoming the first such tabletop game company to have such a union. The employees stated that recent issues related to "managerial impropriety" was a driver for the unionization effort. Paizo voluntarily agreed to recognize the union, allowing collective bargaining negotiations between the company and union to commence. Leaked documents from Wizard of the Coast in January 2023 suggested that Wizards planned to change the Open Game License (OGL), developed for its Dungeons & Dragons products and which Paizo's products are predicated on, to be more restrictive and potentially harm third-party content creators, including Paizo. In response, Paizo announced plans for a new license called the Open RPG Creative License (ORC). Additional publishers, such as Kobold Press, Chaosium, Green Ronin, Legendary Games, and Rogue Genius Games, were to be part of the ORC development process. The ORC is be an open, perpetual, and irrevocable system-agnostic license with legal development paid for by Paizo "under the legal guidance of Azora Law"; however, the license "will not be owned by Paizo, nor will it be owned by any company who makes money publishing RPGs". Paizo planned to find a "nonprofit with a history of open source values to own this license" and stated that "Azora Law's ownership of the process and stewardship should provide a safe harbor against any company being bought, sold, or changing management in the future and attempting to rescind rights or nullify sections of the license". Polygon reported that "in the weeks that Hasbro spent publicly flailing, customers spent an extraordinary amount of money investing in its competition". Paizo stated that it had "sold through 'an 8-month supply' of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook" within two weeks; the company also reported high demand for other products such as the Pathfinder Beginner Box. In April 2023, Paizo announced that it will remaster its core Pathfinder second edition rulebooks, to complete its move away from the Wizards of the Coast OGL and to the new ORC license. For the remaster, Paizo changed, reworked or renamed many of the game's rules, mechanics, and its lore and setting details, "to remove the chance of future licensing conflicts with Wizards". At Gen Con 2023, Paizo also announced that it will be releasing a second edition of Starfinder under the ORC license. The Pathfinder second edition remastered rules were released on November 15, 2023. In 2025, Diamond Comic Distributors, Paizo's exclusive distributor for its physical products, filed for bankruptcy, leading to around $10 million of Paizo's stock held up during bankruptcy proceedings. While Paizo has been able to legally nullify their Diamond contract and obtained a new distributor, Independent Publishers Group, this is still being challenged by Diamond in courts. As a result, Paizo announced in June 2026 that they had to write off the undistributed products as a loss, and with physical sales still low, they had to lay off 12 employees. Paizo also planned to reduce their product output to two modules a month (one for Pathfinder and another for Starfinder). They were also bolstering community-created content to help offset their slowdown in releases. Paizo also terminated its contract with "Archives of Nethys", a third-party website that hosted Pathfinder and Starfinder rulebooks and other material under a free access model. According to the site's owners, the contract was terminated because the site never made enough money to pay royalties back to Paizo. While the site will still be able to host rules, they will be limited by when these are published by Paizo rather than with early access materials, and will remove copyrighted art from the site. Paizo subsequently released an official statement, stating that: "The use of Paizo artwork on the web also created ongoing confusion about what assets are allowed under the Community Use Policy... other sites routinely copied those assets and used them for themselves. That created additional work for our legal and licensing teams to draft DMCA and cease‑and‑desist notices." Paizo announced a partnership in August 2026 with the online tabletop games store DriveThruRPG, that will offer all of Paizo's digital catalog as well as physical sales of its books.
Identity
Identity
Paizo Publishing is recorded as founded by Lisa Stevens. Associated with United States. Recorded from 2002.
Institutional history
Dated record
Institutional history
The full dated record · 2 entries
2002
Paizo Publishing established.
2002
Paizo Publishing is recorded from 2002.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
- United States
Named but not plotted · 1
Paizo Publishing is associated with United States.
Country
Reception
Paizo Publishing won the 2005 Silver ENnie Award for "Best Publisher", and the 2012 Gold ENnie Award for "Fan’s Favorite Publisher", and again in 2013, and the Silver in 2015, and Gold again in 2016.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Paizo.com - Forums / PaizoCon: General Discussion: The History of Paizo. Paizo.com.
- 2.Publishers. diamondbookdistributors.com. 2015-01-07.
- 3.Paizo / Press / Archive / 2013. Paizo.com. 2013-01-17.
- 4.Paizo / Press / Archive / 2014. Paizo.com. 2014-03-11.
- 5.Magazine Publishers of America. New & Noted 2003 Magazines: January-December 2003. MPA Website:The Definitive Source of the Magazine Industry. 2003.
- 6.Bova, Ben. Local action can change the world, one word at a time. Naples Daily News. December 26, 2004.
- 7.Amazing Stories Ends Run. Sci Fi Weekly. 563. March 27, 2006.
- 8.Wizards of the Coast. Paizo Publishing to Cease Publication of Dragon and Dungeon. 2007-04-19.
- 9.Magazine Publishers of America. Defunct or Suspended Magazines 2007. MPA Website:The Definitive Source of the Magazine Industry. 2003.
- 10.Paige Wiser. Found: A subscription for happiness in life. Chicago Sun Times. A18. 2007-07-01.
- 11.Julie Bartel. The Good, The Bad, and the Edgy. School Library Journal. 35. 2005-07-01.
- 12.Paizo Publishing Announces the Pathfinder RPG. Paizo.com.
- 13.Announcing the Starfinder Roleplaying Game!. Paizo.com.
- 14.'Starfinder' Brings Fan Favorite Fantasy Tabletop RPG to Space. Waypoint. 2017-08-17.
- 15.Retrieve 'Starfinder RPG.' Priority One. All Other Priorities Rescinded. - GeekDad. GeekDad. 2017-05-20.
- 16.Starfinder hopes to do for space opera what D&D has done for fantasy. Polygon.
- 17.Starfinder is here, and it's fantastic. Polygon.
- 18.Hall, Charlie. Pathfinder, with roots in a decades-old strain of D&D, is launching a second edition. Polygon. May 10, 2018.
- 19.Paizo Officially Announces Pathfinder Second Edition Release Date. BleedingCool.com. March 6, 2019.
- 20.Paizo / Press. Paizo.com. 2020-06-15.
- 21.Edwin Wong. Oddball diversions. New Straits Times Local. 16. 2008-01-19.
- 22.John Baichtal. Geekdad - "Planet Stories" Revives the Best of Pulp Fiction. Wired News. 2008-02-05.
- 23.Paizo Employees Unionize. unitedpaizoworkers.org. 2021-10-14.
- 24.Hall, Charlie. Workers at Paizo unionize, a first for the tabletop role-playing game industry. Polygon. October 14, 2021.
- 25.Carpenter, Nicole. Pathfinder, Starfinder publisher voluntarily recognizes workers' union. Polygon. October 22, 2021.
- 26.Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License. Paizo. January 12, 2023.
- 27.Paizo Announces Its Own Gaming License Amid D&D OGL Controversy. Gizmodo. January 12, 2023.
- 28.Paizo Addresses Pathfinder's Future, Announces New System-Neutral Open RPG License. ComicBook.com. January 12, 2023.
- 29.Hall, Charlie. D&D's OGL controversy turbocharges sales of virtually every other tabletop RPG. Polygon. 2023-02-06.
- 30.Paizo Sells Out Eight Months of Pathfinder Supply In Two Weeks. TechRaptor. 2023-01-26.
- 31.Anderson, Julia. D&D's OGL Controversy Has Pathfinder Selling Out at a Mind-Blowing Rate. CBR. 2023-01-26.
- 32.Paizo Runs Out of 'Pathfinder Core Rulebooks' until April 2023. icv2.com. January 30, 2023.
- 33.Codega, Linda. Paizo Announces 4-Book Pathfinder Remaster Project. Gizmodo. April 26, 2023.
- 34.Jarvis, Matt. Pathfinder 2E is remastering its core rulebooks to split from D&D OGL and make learning the RPG easier. Dicebreaker. April 27, 2023.
- 35.Nelson, Sam. Pathfinder stripped every last trace of D&D from its new rulebooks even owlbears. Polygon. November 21, 2023.
- 36.Dohm-Sanchez, Jeffrey. Paizo Announces Starfinder 2E'. icv2.com. August 3, 2023.
- 37.Carter, Chase. The first of Pathfinder’s remastered RPG books are now available, sans D&D influence. Dicebreaker. November 16, 2023.
- 38.D and D Rival Paizo Force to Make Layoffs After Devastating Loss Stemming from $10 Million in Stock Being Held Hostage. Gamesradar.com.
- 39.Randall, Harvey. Pathfinder 2e creators Paizo end partnership with Archives of Nethys, which offers most of the D&D alternative's ruleset for free, over legal confusion and paperwork. pcgamer.com. 2026-07-16.
- 40.Nelson, Sam. All of D&D rival Paizo's books are coming to DriveThruRPG for a brutal reason. Polygon. 2026-08-12.
- 41.The ENnie Awards -- 2005 Awards. www.ennie-awards.com.
- 42.2012 Noms and Winners | ENnie Awards. www.ennie-awards.com.
- 43.2013 Noms and Winners | ENnie Awards. www.ennie-awards.com.
- 44.2015 ENnie Award Winners | ENnie Awards. www.ennie-awards.com.
- 45.2016 ENnie Award Winners | ENnie Awards. www.ennie-awards.com.
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