Tldr: They’ve been going through this cycle of consecutive huge successes and consecutive flops for decades but this is the worst series of flops in the company’s history
My guess is because of shareholder pressure
My guess is because of shareholder pressure
Of course, the lesson to be learned that no company ever learns: Don’t go public. Don’t ever go public!
The people who decide to go public are looking to cash out, and the future survival of the company is not a factor in the decision. The lesson is not learned because it’s the corporate equivalent of starting a heroin addiction on purpose
With the rise of private equity, you don’t even have to go public to sell out anymore. So many companies in operation today are empty shells puppeted by private equity firms who buy any company in any industry just to squeeze every last bit of profit out of them before throwing them away.
Just look at the veterinary industry and the mass disappearance of vet practices owned by the doctors who work there.
But what if I don’t care about the company, our products, our customers, or any of my (soon-to-be former) co-workers, and just want a pile of money right now for selling all that out?
Paradox’s dlc policy is why I might buy the games, but rarely buy the dlc. I do enjoy the gameplay in them, I probably have something like 3k hours between CK2, CK3, EU4 and Stellaris.
Eh, I honestly like their DLC policy. Basically, every year or two, I come back and buy some DLC on sale and basically treat it like a new game. I’ll play EU4 for a couple hundred hours, take a break for a few months, then buy some DLC for a couple hundred more hours. I’d much rather have this than new releases every few years, since I can just add new systems instead of dealing with a bunch of UI and core system changes.
The main problem I see is that they launch things half-baked, which means their games and DLC aren’t worth the price at launch, and by the time they’re properly patched, they’re on a pretty significant discount. I think they’d do much better if they delayed their releases until they’re actually done and cut prices by 25% or so. If they consistently delivered high quality products, I’d probably buy near launch.
The next biggest problem is a shift toward flavor DLC instead of actual mechanics. While I like the flavor, I mostly come for the new mechanics to play with, and at least in EU4, they’ve been reducing the actual amount of new gameplay with each DLC.
Hearing that imperator Rome surpassed their expectations is surprising because they must have had extremely low expectations. That is my biggest gaming purchase regret of all time.
Paradox Interactive once encapsulated the best parts of PC gaming.
Ah yes ripping off people with incomplete games that have dozens of DLCs.
I loved how they did it with surviving Mars.
The games was excellent and each DLC actually added something new.
That I can get onboard with
They do the same with all games that I have from them. Crusader Kings, Stellaris, etc. The base game is always great on its own, then you have very cheap cosmetic DLC and more expensive content DLCs which add new mechanics and expand the game (they also always release a free update for everyone who owns the base game when a new DLC gets released. Oh, and all of their games are moldable, which means you could just implement the cosmetics (and even lots of the other parts of the DLCs via mods).
Paradox gets shit for their DLC model by people who either don’t play their games, or by people who are so obsessed by them that they think you NEED a given DLC to play it (just because they know of a strategy with it).
The issue with paradox’s game design philosophy is what makes their dlc heavy approach so much more problematic.
From a design point a mentality of “always more stuff and always room for more stuff” isn’t going to produce immediately compelling gameplay nor is it going to focus on stripping down fluff until that magic feeling of “the sum is greater than its parts” arises.
Paradox games are almost never more than a sum of their parts, and frequently customers are purposefully made to feel by paradox that their formerly complete game is lacking and needs the new dlc to actually be a coherent full experience.
From a design and profit standpoint, paradox is incapable of institutionally perceiving when a game design has justtt enough but not too much stuff for emergent and interesting gamestates to arise organically from the way stuff is put together (rather than from the mere presence of more stuff).
I stopped buying their games ages ago because keeping up with DLCs was borderline work that somehow became more and more expensive. Devs need to learn to finish their games and move on to new ideas.
