User Summary:
Steve Wieck (born 1969) and his brother Stewart Wieck had their first break in the RPG industry when Fantasy Games Unlimited published a Villains & Vigilantes (2nd Edition) adventure module that they wrote, The Secret in the Swamp, in 1986 when they were both still in high school. They began a fanzine called Arcanum that sold thirty copies; buoyed by this success, they decided to make it a monthly magazine (changing the name to White Wolf Magazine because Palladium Books was already using the term "Arcanum").
White Wolf Magazine improved over time, and by issue 8 was a professional production. Then in 1991, White Wolf Magazine under the Wieck brothers and Lion Rampant under Mark Rein•Hagen merged to form White Wolf Publishing (White Wolf). Initially Stewart Wieck was the company President, following in 1993 by Steve. He held the position until 2002, at which point Mike Tinney became the President.
Steve Wieck then went on to found DriveThruRPG in order to provide role-playing games in an electronic format, with the aim of providing PDFs of every RPG (including out of print titles). His industry ties helped him to gain co-operation from a wide range of publishers, and the site was successful. It eventually merged with its older rival RPGNow, allowing them to achieve various economies of scale and making them the most successful RPG PDF retailer. The combined company has since expanded into various other areas of electronic publishing and print on demand services for books and card games (through the DriveThruCards marketplace).
