Echoes of the Multiverse

I just got this in my email, thought that it was interesting enough to share

Dear White Wolf Customer,

Thank you for being a subscriber to the White Wolf online book reader service. It has been a great privilege to share with you so many of the books that are part of the rich World of Darkness history!

We regret to inform you that, due to internal changes at White Wolf, the subscription service will be terminated on Thursday, 20 December, along with the worldofdarkness.com website. After 20 December you will no longer be able to access the service, and you will receive a full refund for any fees you have paid for as follows:

Example with Annual Subscription: if you paid for an annual subscription and have used only 5 months of the service, you will receive a full refund for the unused 7 months.

Example with Monthly Subscription: if you paid for a monthly subscription you will receive a full refund for this month.

Refunds will be issued in the first quarter of 2019.

Why is this happening?

On 16 November, White Wolf announced that it is starting a period of restructuring. It will be integrated directly into Paradox Interactive, and under temporary management during this process. We are recruiting new leadership to guide White Wolf both creatively and commercially into the future, a process that has been ongoing since September.

Going forward, White Wolf will focus on brand management. This means White Wolf will develop the guiding principles for its vision of the World of Darkness, and give licensees the tools they need to create new, excellent products in this story world. White Wolf will no longer develop and publish these products internally. This has always been the intended goal for White Wolf as a company, and it is now time to enact it.

Closing the online book subscriptions and worldofdarkness.com is part of this restructuring and refocusing process. We deeply regret this inconvenience to you, and the very short notice.

If you have any questions or comments about this, we welcome them at info@white-wolf.com

Thank you and Best Regards,

White Wolf

Wow. So if I'm reading this right, White Wolf is basically going to exist to license their properties out to studios that want to do something with them, rather than do any in-house development themselves? They're basically a shell company?

That's really weird. Paradox is a PC game publisher. They apparently bought White Wolf in 2015. They're usually pretty hands off with studios they acquire.

This is probably what prompted this further step.

Yup. In this case the "PC" part of their job description can have multiple meanings.

They'd been going that way for a while now. Onyx Path has been the major producer of White Wolf stuff and often hard to tell the differences between the two. Their LARP was being handled by a different company. Only three books were ever released by the new White Wolf, the core and the two books that were handled so poorly.

I'm curious on whether their live gaming 'tv show' will continue into a second season like they had planned. Not the best but it was decent enough I guess.

I'm also curious what I'm actually going to get back from the offer. Months ago, I purchased a Humble Bundle with subscription time and a good number of books. I'd be happy if they gave me credit for them over on rpgnow.

Well guys, now that my boss has lifted the cover I can shed some light on the subject: most White Wolf properties are going to be licensed to Modiphus (currently the company producing the most recent iteraction of Conan the Barbarian RPG and Star Trek RPG), which is going to continue development using most of the original team.

Woodclaw wrote: ↑Sat Dec 22, 2018 10:21 am Well guys, now that my boss has lifted the cover I can shed some light on the subject: most White Wolf properties are going to be licensed to Modiphus (currently the company producing the most recent iteraction of Conan the Barbarian RPG and Star Trek RPG), which is going to continue development using most of the original team.

Thank you for the insight.

Interesting. That's a nonexclusive licence, right?

so how is this different from what CCP did again?

I know Modiphius now has the main license. But this is exactly what CCP did, or rather try to do. It didn't work so well until Onyx Path took it over and did the 20th Anniversary edition (4th ed now). Then Paradox tried and crashed and burned... spectacularly. So... what exactly is new?