As union loses 20% of membership to layoffs, Paizo’s CEO shares his concerns for the future of the company
“The loss from 2025 has happened, and no matter what happens, that can't be fixed.”
Earlier this week, Paizo announced they were laying off 12 workers — a significant number for a tabletop publisher of their size. As per United Paizo Workers, the cuts amount to about 20% of the union’s total membership. These layoffs come on the back of Paizo reporting a loss of $2 million for 2025 that was directly attributable to last year’s bankruptcy of distribution giant, Diamond Comic Distributors Inc, according toJim Butler, CEO of Paizo, who spoke to Rascal News in an interview. “We were partners with Diamond pretty much throughout Paizo's entire existence,” said Butler. “And we had a great relationship with them, all the way up until the point where we did not.”
Paizo, like many RPG publishing companies, has three primary channels for distributing their games: directly to customers (via their online store, for example), through hobby stores, and through book channels like Amazon or Barnes & Noble. “I would say the biggest channel for Paizo has always been our direct-to-retail market on Paizo.com,” said Butler. “The hobby channel and the book channel would kind of fight each other. Some years, book was bigger; some years, hobby was bigger.”
Alongside other RPG and comic publishers, Paizo has been part of an ongoing lawsuit to recover their stock from Diamond’s banking lenders, as Rascal reported earlier,. But according to Butler, winning their suit doesn’t erase Paizo’s considerable losses. “The loss from 2025 has happened, and no matter what happens, that can't be fixed,” said Butler. The real reason for the lawsuit is to prevent further damage to their sales. “Our biggest concern right now is all of that inventory in the warehouse basically being sold to somebody at 3% on the dollar or whatever that they can get out of it, and just them flooding the market everywhere,” said Butler.
This is particularly complicated because Paizo’s access to book distribution has not recovered, not only because they were legally barred from switching distributors or recovering their stock but also because the market itself seems to have shrunk in the interim. “Paizo's real danger at this point is, number one, the book market seems damaged. It's not clear that it's going to bounce back to the levels it was [before Diamond’s bankruptcy],” said Butler. He added that the stores and other retail partners that bought Paizo’s books via Diamond aren’t ordering at the same levels. This is despite the fact that Paizo has a new distributor, Independent Publishers Group. It’s not clear to Butler how permanent this downturn might be — sales might bounce back in the course of time, but it could also be that some of Diamond’s customers just might not stock Paizo’s (or anybody else’s) games anymore.
But it wasn’t just 2025 that caught Paizo by surprise. Butler wouldn’t state specifically whether Paizo made a profit in 2024 but did say it was “a normal year” for them, financially. The recent high point was 2023 where the company benefited from a backlash against Wizards of the Coast around their decision to revoke the OGL. In his opinion, the gaming industry has felt in flux ever since the COVID-19 pandemic. “It's always something,” he said.
Butler himself is no stranger to layoffs. He worked for TSR prior to their purchase by Wizards of the Coast in 1997. “I was there when layoffs were happening,” he said. “Everybody was just kind of waiting in their cubes to see whether or not that would happen. It was scary.” Butler remembers it being particularly disorienting because TSR “were putting down marble on the floors” at the same time.
It’s a completely different situation in 2026. When management decided to lay off staff (amongst other cost-cutting measures), Paizo was bound by their agreement with the union which was ratified in 2023. United Paizo Workers said in their statement to Rascal that, through this agreement, they “secured several layoff-specific protections we’re now very glad to have, including 20 days’ notice, severance pay, and recall rights, none of which existed before we unionized.”
As per the procedure laid out in Butler’s announcement, layoffs from the teams that management identified would be carried out from most junior to most senior. This means that the affected employees would know of proposed cuts in advance. But the union had to be notified and given time to propose alternate measures, including allowances for other staff to potentially volunteer in the place of their affected junior colleagues.
The union said, “Union members found out about the layoffs June 8th, with the matter being made public shortly after. The next step in this difficult process is working with management to explore any and all options for lessening the impact on affected employees, all of whom are union members, and who represent about 20% of our membership. We appreciate the outpouring of public support, which has been instrumental to the UPW’s success since its formation and continues to bolster our efforts.”
Additional reporting by Chase Taylor-Carter.
