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I had Paradox dev's/moderators call me a liar when I wrote in my Negatiive Review that they removed a tniy vanilla game options and then put it behind a DLC paywall. I made them so mad, but it was true. Even the latest DLC for that very old game EU4 has an empire option that is only available to DLC owners and everyone else can go fk off. I have no trust left for Paradox. They are as bad as those other triple AAA"s.
Bit late on the party to this one Paradox has had a pretty good last few quarters wth some of its more major games. Victoria 3's Spheres of Influence have raised player counts alognside being the most sold dlc. And crusader kings 3's recent dlc roads to power has had similar results. And plus a new game "project caesar" which is most likely eu5 seems to be set to come out some time next year and has mostly positive feedback from the community.
@@spadegaming6348 yeah dont listen to bellular news, the guy is scrambling to look for reasons to call paradox bad, because simply one game called city skylines 2 failed at launch, but the video wouldn't make much ingagement if it was about that because its old news.
I don't know why 5 years ago someone at Paradox said said. "We have a nice small company that makes fun if buggy niche games with loyal communities. Why don't we copy the sales strategy of the most greedy company that everyone universally hates? That is sure to work out well"
They went publicly traded shortly after or shortly before Stellaris released, that's why. (I can't recall the exact date) The owner himself said "This won't change anything" pffft.
@@Verdiumm This is the answer. Paradox games were a bit expensive back then, but they've gone through the roof ever since, not just in terms of DLC price/quantity of content ratio, but in how they behave during sales.
@@toketsupuurin That is because how it is constructed. Saying that the corporations are not at fault is probably going a bit too far, but the way public companies work is, they always have to make more profit. Private companies are well with living with the high profits they have, if it's enough, it's great. And maybe increase a little. Public companies - shareholders only make money, if the profit itself keeps rising. They make profit from the increase. So the managers are elected and tasked with always getting a bit more money out of the costumer's pockets than the quarter before. Once a company goes public, it doesn't matter that a forum they host has guides of decades on it. It gets deleted, because doing that increases profits. All that goes well while the market share increases. However, at a certain point, there's a cap. All people that can possibly be reached are reached. That's when it begins to turn toxic. Managers still have to get an increase next quarter. So now comes the phase of getting ever greedy and pulling the last of a penny out of the pockets, whereever it is possible. That's how that system works. And that's why we see what we see with several big companies now turning to ever greedier practices.
Welcometo the rat race of havingto please shareholders. Quite honestly the stock market should be limited to core commodities only, venyute and investment capital is more of a cancer causing processed sugar than a reliable source of company nutrition.
@@SeventhSolar They respond with narcissistic rage. As in, they direct their anger at the person criticising them because they are a threat to their ego or status. @HGTudor has done very good explanations of this. They could always be BOTH narcissistic AND a sociopath 😂
They arnt going to redeem themselves by outright admitting that they need to lean into their "lets bleed our IP's dry by making 1000 DLC's approach". I genuinely think Paradox might not survive all of this, and honestly good riddance.
@@harbhub I mean, yes, they had been slowly bleeding away the good will people had for them for years, but they did go through a pretty abrupt dip in trust with the latest cluster of failed launches and cancelled/delayed projects. There's a bit of distance between "I don't like this" and "I'm done with this".
@@Axeface you aren't being realistic, they are absolutely going to survive and have their core games like eu4, hoi4, and stellaris with tons of players despite eu4 being ancient. People actually like vic3 now and this is all without mentioning ck3's huge dlc success and the oncoming "project cesar" you speak as a doomer who doesn't know shit about paradox but yeah I am glad they realized their non-historical stuff is a flop.
I mean they are giving multiple free dlc for eu4 that they say should have been there form the start. that’s a start so if they do that for other games to keep them updated and if dlc are needed for basic mechanics then that’s great.
@@MetricOwl-tv8zx I think they gave away "Beaches" for Skylines II as well... a DLC that was reaching single-digit like on Steam... a DLC so bad they refunded any poor suckers that paid for it. (Well... except us REAL suckers that ordered the Deluxe DLC.) I'm thinking anything Paradox gives away for free - is something that they might be sued if they tried to charge for it.
Companies invested so much shit into brand name recognition, and became reliant on it, it they aren’t food manufacturers. Coca-cola has not changed their product. They can rely on the brand to sell itself. But with games every product is it’s own brand, and while the manufacturer can influence people to buy games more willingly, you still have to make good products.
@@azumi5459 if something is yours, but you want to sell it, you can't do whatever you want with it, and still expect someone will buy it, it has to meet the buyers standards, not the sellers standards.
Anything with a paradox logo is instant fail for the next 10 years easily. If they can show they have fixed their mistakes only then will I give them a penny in pre orders. Not a day before
Their business model was only tolerable while it was making genuinely great content. But if you release disappointing or unstable DLC and games it doesn't fly. You need good will to get away with charging $300 or more per game after all the DLC and expansions are factored in.
And also you can not release half assed games because they free labour a.k.a community, would finish it for you for free. This also killed Bethesda now
They still make amazing games. CK3, EU4, Vic 3, HOI4, and Stellaris are nothing short of incredible (maybe exclude Vicky for now). HOI4 even after being released more than 8 years ago gains more and more daily players. IDK about their reputation as a publisher, but as a developer they create games no other studios ever touch. Even if others did, I doubt they'd reach that quality. DLC policy is simply their way of staying afloat. You can't expect to stay alive while just giving away free features. Besides, you get 1000s of hours out of their games anyway. Other than Sims, I don't know if there's such a SP game
It seems their current model is to release a game, then release a near unending stream of DLC for it to maximize the profit on their investment. The problem is that approach usually ends up with base games that have minimal effort and aren't fun. They might become fun if you add the DLC, but that comes at a total cost which is significantly higher than the base game and people will start to question the value proposition of what you're offering.
Yeah, like Stellaris, I didnt mind the DLC's that added wide mechanics to the base game as it was pretty viable to play however you wanted and they usually gave the modders new tools to work with, then they got a new head dev who started lecturing the community about 'managing players power fantsy' and 'balance' and the patches and DLC switched to content that forced his favoured his preferred style of play, haven't touched the game since let alone bought a DLC.
@maddlarkin tbh I'm not the biggest fan of Stellaris because I like to see familiar countries or leaders. I know for other games when they messed they fixed it. As for hoi4 and eu4, they added a lot of old DLC mechanics and contents to the base game anyway, so you don't have to spend a bajillion dollars when you start the game in 2024. They currently have 40 dollar bundle for eu4 with full DLC and game. They'll be releasing eu5 in the second half of 2025 probably, that's why. But eu4 with all of the DLCs are enough to keep one busy and entertained for two years without any other game anyway.
The tragedy of course is nobody was even expecting Cities Skylines 2 anytime soon so they had no deadline and could've spent the time actually polishing the product and letting people enjoy a few free DLC for the first one to tide them over but they couldn't wait and paid the price for releasing a buggy mess.
CS2 was in development well before Covid (I did a playtest in the Paradox office in Stockholm in 2019 on an early build so I know) and pre-development somewhere around 2018. I don't know what went wrong, but Paradox isn't big enough to develop a game for 6-8 years, so from a financial standpoint I'd say it had to be released. I also know that CO had problems with CS1, rather big problems, up until just weeks before release (tunnels didn't work amongst other things and where very close to be cut from the game), so maybe they banked on being able to fix it before release this time around too but it didn't work out.
No, they always have deadlines. That is what the earnings call and shareholder meetings are - its a bunch of people in suits who have no interest in videogames or the wellbeing of players, but know that videogames make money pushing for returns on their investments - at all costs. They are more concerned with their short term earnings than the long haul. Mostly because they are already old boomers who don't have much time left and want to make even more money before they die.
I don't even mind that the game is in a poor state even now - its that we were actively lied to about how the game would play. The game we were shown and the game we got aren't the same. And Early Access exists for this reason - releasing a game early with the promise of finishing it.
As an economics professor asked my class day one "what is the most valuable commodity in the world?" Flurry of answers follow "gold","lithium","pork bellies ". He waits a bit and the says while they were all good answers they were all wrong and then said the most valuable commodity is consumer confidence. To quote him " It takes years to build, it cannot be counterfeited, and used unwisely it can be lost in an instant. Our whole economy from the highest priced commodity to the dollar itself is based off consumer confidence, so if you know what your doing, never give them a reason to doubt."
@@fransmith3255 I mean most econ classes fall into that most of the time, they ain't teaching communism(other than theory and history), no matter what fox says.
@jurb2941 That's the problem with niche genre: Some Indie devs can't make and compete with it because the genre requires a lot of mechanics or foresight or calculations that costs too much money to properly implement and could put them out of business (for example the Total War series) AAA developers/publishers never touch the genre because of how niche it is and thinking that it won't bring enough profits or they do touch it but it usually ends up being dog water quality.
@@shaynegadsden W&R is a surprisingly solid game and I love its quirky premise. It's like they threw Tropico 4, SimCity, and Transport Tycoon into a blender to see what the smoothie would taste like.
Their haunting problem is DLC bloat. Almost every "Solution" to this problem they have come up with has been anti consumer. I have no pity for them nor patience for abusive relationships.
I could live with DLC Bloat.... What I can't live with - is what they did to Skylines II. That pile of garbage is still unplayable - a full year after its "release". I see Early Access games that are WAY more functional than this tripe.
DLC bloat to me, used to be tolerable because good DLC gives you several long playthroughs of content. Sometimes a DLC these days is content you won't even use in a single playthrough at all. All about the value.
DLC is a good thing that, used as part of a "hobby shop" monetization model (think model railroading; you get a base set for Christmas, then five years and hundreds of dollars later, you've got a sprawling layout taking up an entire room or a basement or a garage), can make long-lasting long-tail games that people love (looks fondly at American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck 2.) Used for evil, you get what Paradox, Dovetail, and EA Maxis have done with games like Train Sim World, Sims 4, and Paradox's first-party grand strategy games.
I never could get into HOI4 or CK3, but from a distance it almost seems like their DLC each are paid overhaul updates that overtime completely upend the core gameplay loop by just stacking more and more new features. It reminds me a lot of modding communities that just go wild with adding more and more stuff with no concern about how it all fits together.
In the aughts, Paradox was right up there with Bethesda on my "shut up and take my money" instant-buy developer list. Every time I think my own self has gone downhill in the last 20 years, I just remember "you could be worse, you could be Paradox, Bethesda, Blizzard, the Creative Assembly......" I think my point here is that I miss 2004.
I think everyone who was around from the early '90s to late '00s misses those days. The tech wasn't as impressive, but the companies put in far more effort and care. With the way the big "AAA" companies are going right now, we might be on a return to those days. At this rate, it's not unreasonable to think most of the big companies might start caving in. We'll probably be left with mostly indie devs and a few mid-size studios. Probably 1-2 "AAA"s that survive this, but not anything like they are today.
@@RookMeAmadeus "We'll probably be left with mostly indie devs and a few mid-size studios." You say that like it's a bad thing. I think it is _hilarious_ that the number-one top-rated game on Steam in terms of quantity and ratio of reviews was made by one guy in his bedroom (Stardew Valley, at least according to the Steam 250.) In fact, most of the best-loved games on Steam that Valve didn't make are indie and AA titles. That says something about the future of the medium.
@@SimuLord Creative assembly isnt that bad, yes they are assheads who lie to us all the time, but their main games for the last decade are very solid. you maybe dont like the total warhammer games, but they run well, have dlc with good value (most of the time) and have very solid gameplay mechanics. the only issue is the mod support.
@@SimuLord I never said it was a bad thing at all. That's probably the best outcome we could hope for at this point. The only thing better would be all the big companies firing their dead weight execs, buying back their shares, going private, and getting back to actually being game companies, but that's not happening.
This is the benefit of the doubt that a corporate company deserves in this day and age: I'll buy your game when you finish fixing it, and what have you done for me today?
@@elFulberto Founders make money, they can in theory get a cash injection to expand or buy new kit, some prestige attached to it, can make getting funding via debt facilities etc easier (which is not inherently a bad thing since cash flow can be smoothed instead of being block buster dependent etc). Downside is that the financial reporting and compliance obligations shoot up and there is ever increasing public scrutiny/ analyst opinion on what you're doing and you might now have 20 owners rining your CFO daily to demand a chance of course.
Paradox has a business model that requires excellence from their side. With all the DLCs they are also raising a big entry blocking wall for potential new players, meaning that you have to make sure that your current customers stay hooked. If they lose them, they will be in big trouble
Yeah, I want Stellaris. Looks fun but the insane amount to get the full game would be insane. No game is worth like $300 which is about the cost of Stellaris with the DLCs. No is fun at 300 bucks.
The way they treat people on their forums is also a big problem. If you aren't a company shill, you get banned for trivial reasons, even when the action commited is completely warranted. That's why I haven't brought a new P'dox game since Stellaris. Once the DLC for games I have run out, the wallet closes permanantly. I've played their games since EU1, so I was among their original customers. No more.
@@CaseyLynn-i7u Em... You do know that most DLC are not "essential"? Don't trust me? Search for DLC tierlists that release every year. Only few DLC are "must haves". Basic game needs like 2 DLC at the moment to my moment (Utopia that should be part of base game with how good it was (but usually it is part of starting deals) and Galactic Paragons). If you are to make good reasonable purchase on Stellaris you easily can get more than 3 hours of entertainment per each $. Difficult proposition to beat for other ways. Also if you can wait for sales. Getting all of that for 50% or less isn't that rare. Just takes some patience instead of "I want my fun and I want it now".
@kurnugiakurn3567 It's not the worst thing, in the past atleast with Stellaris, buying a DLC once or twice a year isn't terribly expensive if you get to refresh and the total lives for up to thousands of hours it's a good deal. But that does obviously raise a huge wall for new players who will feel they're missing out and they don't know enough which DLC they'd even want. The solution would be to always have a reasonable price base package that includes majority of the older DLC in it.
Yep , any older game you are interested in has lots of DLC , the cost is absurd but their are so many DLC its too much hassle to even look at them all , i just dont even bother with them anymore.
This is a 4X i general. I play total war warhammer and cant spend that much money on another strategy no matter how hard I would like to try stellaris.
The worst part about CK3 is that the price for the dlc is absolutely ludicrous. 30€ for a dlc ???? I recall when CK2's were like 15€ (and also, we're not even comparing the quality of the games or their dlc here, because it would make it even more jarring. There's no way you can convince me that Royal Court is worth even 10 bucks, let alone 30). They have simultaneously driven up the price whilst the quality of the content plummeted
DLC prices climbed to fast for too little content. To where they are trying to use a game by game, not whole catalog, subscription offerings which is a ridiculous level of greed. Basically they want you pay the full price of the game each year you continue to play it if you choose not to buy all the DLC up front. Why this is a problem is in some of their games older DLC can be made obsolete by later patches or other DLC in effect having customers pay full price for a DLC that has no real effect
You make it sounds as Paradox wants it to flop and be a failure, like it makes a lot of business sense, and also that if paradox didn't took it, it would get developed by itself, maybe the wind would do it for you and release on steam. And yes, I also vamp masq 2 will not be a great game, maybe not even good, but HARDLY it should be called as "intentional"
@@DácioNunes-l1v hahaha.... not caring what state something is.. EQUALS "Wanting it to fail". Running into someone because you didn't break, or turn - makes it your fault.... it makes you a murderer. Releasing a broken pile of trash isn't by accident - it is "I don't care what the so-called customers thing - they're just 'gamers', I just want my money". They. Are. Scammers... Crooks.
Oh its going to be horrendous from what I've seen in the trailer if they cared at all about their rep they would just cancel it but they don't really care and are going to just kick that trash onto consumers which is why i don't believe they will change
Yep. Corporations for stellaris was my last purchase. How much would it cost if you would like to play stellaris, hoi iv, victoria 3, europa universalis and crusader kings 3 with all the dlc?
@@Jansmaaa Stellaris Ultimate Bundle: $209 Hearts of Iron IV Ultimate Bundle: $176 Europa Universalis IV Ultimate Bundle: $329 Crusader Kings III Collection: $143 Grand Total: $857
@@Veylon and victoria 3 is 50 to 80€ depending which edition you get. The dlc is 28% off right now so it is only 38,56€! So a total of $977 ish! But wait! What if you want to play a city builder game? Cities skylines 2 is a bust so better just get the first 1. The bundle is -9% at the moment for a small price of 376,15€ jesus christ
I don't care about their reputation to release unfinished games, it's common these days. I hate their reputation of splitting a game into 100 individual DLCs that together cost $500.
I loved old 2016 Stellaris, it was worth the asking price and was a full game on its own merit, but man did they milk it to death with story packs and race packs that cost too much while adding very little. Expansions are not a bad thing, they can be a good way to improve a released game, the problem is we're not getting much Shivering Isles but we are getting a whole lot of Horse Armour.
yee if they keep old prices and sales, like for stelalris until 2 yers ago it go like new dlc have no sale, dlc befor that as well or sometiem 33% dlc befor that one alywas when it posible have 33% CUT, AND EVRY THING DLC BEFOR THSAT HAVE 66% CUT!! now for two dlc you have non to 15% cut and them it go betwen 20-50% and biger price ...
and no im not mind of haveing 9999 dlc ofter like a 10 yers if game is good but not only prices go to big and sale to low, dlc itself break game, today we stil lhave vasalisation problem made by overlord, first contact break half of non english texst in game and some of it are still in game. way to many time they take simple part of game tha work of and make it into advanced one that work wery well at first, but whne new one come out the old one break becoe interactions or is left half end, if they spam us sotry packs that new civic + origins i would total go into that but now they kinda break game
@@txflood2519 Some will say yes, others will so no, here's the definition of what makes a company AAA. "AAA stands for "triple-A" and refers to a classification of video games that are high-budget, high-profile, and often very popular." If we're going by those same standards, then yes, it would be considered as such. (Apparently, the buzzword was used by the CEO- at that time - , Fredrik Wester, in trying to transition their games into that standard.) But in all honesty, I don't think AAA should mean anything anymore all things considered with companies like Ubisoft, EA AND Blizzard shitting the bed, so much.
Idk, I dont think you could consider any of their games triple a. They most certainly are double a games though. As rule of thumb triple a games generally have n Budget of 10 million usd or higher. Double a has around 1 to 9 million. Single a games usually lower then a million. But i agree on paper paradox has the capacity to produce triple a games. Maybe the game they currently are working on has triple a scale. Paradox currently has 5 projects which seem to be on eternal life support. They are currently developing a new game wich seems to be eu5 or at least that is what people think it is. Paradox likes to juggle alot at once. I don't think they have the means to produce triple a games because of this. But without knowing their budget for their games it is difficult to know. Though I dont think they produce triple a games.
@@R3GARnator Yeah. CA's latest stuff has been a promising direction. It still will take time to see if it's a legitimate change for the better, or a big public show of 'look how better we are' before going back to trash, but there's at least reason for cautious optimism there. I'm looking at Paradox a similar way. It's good that they're aware of how badly they've stuffed it. Better than Bethesda or Blizzard, who both like to take shits then tell us it's the best stuff the world has ever seen. But there's a long climb from 'aware' to 'fixed', and promises alone are not nearly enough to get my money. They have a lot of work to do before I'd even consider purchasing one of their games without a lot of independent players convincing me that I won't be disappointed again.
How do you look at City Skylines 2, a game that you built and know it's both buggy as hell and under optimized beyond belief and go "yeah, it's time to launch it"? You either hire a proper QA team or have your entire team do QA for a whole week or you sell it to the public and face the backlash of basically making the people pay to be beta testers. I just don't know how that goes through an entire dev department and everyone seems to be ok with it. That screams "we're tired of this crap, ship it and we'll fix and improve stuff based on feedback".
@@SuperfluousIndividual to be simple, their responsibility are divided between all worker, more worker, less individual responsibility and more people trying to earn money while working the least amount
You decide it's time to launch by looking at your company's financial spreadsheets, not the game itself. According to the spreadsheets, CSII was released at almost the perfect time. Although anyone who actually looked at the game would have realized it needed a lot more time in development.
It was like no one person for the company ever played CS2 for 5 minutes. If they had they would have seen it was a piece on trash. They knew it was trash and wanted a big quarterly report and launched it. They simply said, "f*ck them." Why? A good CS2 game would have been a license to print money. Launch a game base bare bones as you could but actually worked. Then tac on 50 DLCs at $25+ each added content they left or on prepose so that could add in later as a DLC. CS2 would have been a cash cow. Instead, the CS2 hardly worked at all and a year later it still a f*cking mess.
Higher-ups treat QAs as bug spotters. They're not going to trust QAs to give actual "is this game ready" type of feedback. As for management, they just released it at the correct time to make their profit spreadsheet look good. Which, yeah, was awful in the long term, but publicly-traded companies are all about the very short term. And of course, now it's the slightly longer term, and now they're seeing the downside.
You mention that The Chinese Room have a good track record. I'd suggest they don't: they primarily make walking simulators -- Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture -- and there's very little to most of their games. Even A Machine For Pigs, a sequel to a game they didn't make that had puzzles and monsters to avoid, was considerably stripped back compared to the original game and had monsters that were absolutely no threat whatsoever. Personally, I don't see how they can make an RPG on the level of Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines without some serious compromises.
The canceled HSL version looked much more like a Bloodlines 2. Not sure what the Chinese Room is doing, but what they have shown to us doesn't give me any Bloodlines vibes. 😟
Actually they were almost entirely replaced when Sumo Interactive bought them, the only game that the current TCR has released is Still Wakes the Deep, a game very much praised by a lot of critics and players alike, especially for its atmosphere and tone. I'd argue that atmosphere and tone is pretty important for a VTM game, and for most parts, surpassing the original bloodlines in gameplay quality won't be too difficult outside of the story and characters, where the original Bloodlines shined (mostly because it otherwise didn't shine at all).
Every single modern game now even supposed 'singleplayer' ones are live service first, gameplay not even second, it's usually considered an afterthought, if they can't package half-arsed customisation into micro-transactions disguising it as content they take DEI money under the table to push the message if they do those crappy walking simulators and this is the only reason these companies exist. I think this is a big part of why they try to buy out and farm old IPs so much because going back to the conversation of reputation to stay relevant to the topic because they know their original titles can barely stand up on their own especially with the DEI crap shoved in it at every opportunity.
i think that most of the problem is the rabid fanboys of paradox that have held them floating for so long. there has been countless time i have seen compaints over bugs on a paradox game but most of the respone is, "oh it always is, but they always fix it in the end" and no, i am not saying that liking a company or their games is wrong, but when they treat you like a mushroom it is a abusive relationship
Paradox are the only ones that release grand strategy games. They can do all this shit because they have no real competitor, so all we as fans can do is deal with it.
@@greymagic857 i cant help but laught at this, at first i just nodded my head and then i took a second and did a mental translation. so, what you are really saying is this yeah, he/she abuses me, but they are the only one that loves me so i will put up with it
@@pjodron I agree but the only five options we have are a, deal with the abusive behavior and still play the games we enjoy ,b, pirate the games which could lead to a number of other problems,c,create our own games in the same genre which likely would be both expensive and risky,d, get enough people and money together to buy a majority of Paradox’s stock which would likely more expensive or,e, stop playing the games we enjoy. Which seems the best option to you all?
@@brianschonfeld1733 Over time, you may well stop enjoying them. I started with EU1 and have had just about all their grand strategy games on release since then. Time played probably peaked with EU2 , HOI, V2 and CK2. From hundreds of hours, down to 20 with V3 before getting bored of it. Eventually, I can see they are all much the same game, with different veneers. Basically huge spreadsheets, with a nice looking map on top. (I am a sucker for a good map in a game!). The spreadsheets have hundreds of numbers, most of which are of little importance. The art is identifying the 3 or 4 numbers that matter and keep them going in the right direction. Then you have the usually poor tutorials, leaving most of the numbers and relations unexplained. So a whole business has grown up of YT tutorials explaining it. Seems to me that overall, their games are hard to learn, easy to master. To an extent, learning the game *is* the game. So then they release a DLC to scramble up the numbers and the whole process repeats.V3 is probably their last game I will buy. But then I said that about EU3, HOI3, CK2, EU4 ,Stellaris etc etc 🙂
I grew exhausted of Paradox's non-stop dlc bullshit years ago, and just started ignoring their games entirely. They could start rebuilding my trust by releasing games that are actually complete at launch.
THEY ARE. take hearts of Iron 4. if they waited to release with every country had a focus tree we would never see the game. they still be tryign to make it with no income stream.
Meh the only reason Paradox releases focus trees is because it is the easiest minimalistic "content" to sell as DLC Dont confuse causes with consequences @Revkor
@@Cottage_Punk dude the game is several years old. look at thwe base game now. heck go ahead turn off all your DLCS and see what you have now. that takes time AND money.
@@Revkor we should have had basic focus trees for every country in the first year. they arent much work if they dont include new mechanics. we also should have had some minor updates to those country specific mechanics, just a couple of buttons to click to give countries let countries like the US interact with new features.
@@Revkor Look, I am a software dev myself so I can tell you the national focus type of DLC Paradox has been mass producing for years is the most basic stuff ever produce. I could literally do it on my own 2 months after starting coding. I feel embarrassed for them when they publish a dev diary about it. It does not cost 100s of $ to produce this type of "content". You need a very small team of 5 people max if they are all raw beginners (graphical art & QA included).
thats stupid, they make game for intelligent people, intelligent people usually have lots of money. That is the one reason they get away with their price model.
I'm starting to see we are entering a new age, The Death of Big Game studios. CA, UBISOFT, PARADOX, BETESHDA and many more. Hopefully the new studios rising up will learn from these mistakes..
Gaming, affordable computers, internet culture and global economy will be dead before that happens. Hope you like trying to find good games in bargain bins across a mere 3 states and playing them with a playerbase of 5000.
If game is cool then it can have 20 players for what I care, lol. Actually popularity isn't always a good thing. CK3 vs CK2 is good example. CK3 is probably fine game overall but it is aimed at a lot more casual audience and systems in CK3 just aren't scarifying of you're not casual gamer - so that includes most of CK2 playerbase, bunch of history nerds who don't mind overcomplicating things too much. CK3 is aimed more for average Joe, at the end of the day there is a lot more people like that. Plenty of games gone that route. Though I have to admit, this approach just makes more money if marketing reach the new ajdiences and older fans also will help with spreading the news.
THIS THIS THIS THIS!!! Just like someone not breaking, nor turning for a pedestrian would be a murderer... ...so are Paradox CEO, and board of directors crooks and scammers.
Yeah. Both managers agreed that they liked hitting their quarterly performance targets and getting a bonus. I'm sure if they had asked on-the-ground developers and testers, those would have said the game isn't ready.
Of course it's nonsense. The contract says Paradox can mandate when it's time to be released, and speaking out against them is suicide for any dev that wants to EVER do business with ANY studio. Paradox has done this to plenty of other games and studios in the past, and their actions have thoroughly torpedoed those studios and killed potential franchises as a result. The only thing that's new is that Paradox has realized they've screwed up enough that they're feeling repercussions from a dwindling user base.
@@CHCrux It's the willful choice of quick money over long term brand respect. Team17 was once the world leader in technology and game-play, then they chose to release budget games at full price... ...today they are a Worm-producing laughing-stock of the gaming community. They tried to become relevant again, but after nuking ones reputation so completely, I don't think there is any coming back. Shorting the stock is a sure-fire move.
I loved CK2 and bought about half of the DLC for that game and bought CK3 on the first day of release. I figured the new game would be vanilla but it's 4 years later and the game still doesn't have half the content of its predecessor even if you spend the extra $100 to buy all the DLC. It's clear they are purposely holding back content to string out their revenue stream but I refuse to spend another dollar until they give us the game we deserve.
@@njebei It’s got just as much, if not more content, than CK2. Also not as much DLC but the DLC is more expensive if you don’t buy the pass in advance. I have 2,000+ hours in each game, trust me bro CK3 has surpassed its predecessor the moment they throw in secret societies
Am i the only one who finds it crazy to see these companies think "i hate my unfinished games release reputation" And then you look at all that DLC out there they never compiled into a definitive edition and think "you have a way to solve that if you really want to, bitching about it says you are making no effort to resolve it.
@@Revkor I said nothing about PRICE, I am talking about "DEFINITIVE Editions", physical or downloadable copies of feature complete games with all DLC included, no download required, no day 1 patch, nothing but plug and play, when your development cycle fully concludes and last DLC releases. They used to be called GotY editions Essentially that kind of release just makes the original release date the alpha release, and that psychological sales model is the only reason companies never do this, because it would be admitting telling customers to pay extra for Alpha/Beta releases is stupid, we would rather have the full fixed version, and they get more money parsing it out broken, which is the accusation they are claiming is supposedly false and that they WANT to be perceived NOT to be doing. It's like a coke addict telling you they don't like being called a coke addict while doing lines or buying a dime bag in front of the rehab clinic.
@@michaellane5381 That is exactly why if I dont buy in the first years i probably never will buy their games, got pretty much in cities skylines and was enough. Like CK2 still doesn´t have a complete edition? Why? And why not at least make like season packs from year to year and make them cheaper because they are several years old, and those "packs" that they sell are horrendous tbh.
@@wayne9508 And V3 is even worse than CK3. They are doing less and less with each release, obviously fully expecting to fix it up with several years of high price DLC.
paradox failed as a company when they started dlc-baiting. they’re in a vulnerable position, and as soon as another company decides to make decent grand strategy games, paradox is going to feel it.
This is funny considering that years ago, I was permabanned from Paradox forums for posting a negative review for one of HoI4s early DLCs - which has resulted in me no longer buying any PI games.
For a second I thought you meant there was a sots: the pit 2, and I had no idea that existed. Then I realized you meant the OG series and I looked it up. Then I saw there was in fact a sots: the pit 2 in early access.
I am a gamer who's trust was killed. I waited and waited and waited for Vic3. I played Vic2 for hundreds of hours. I formed super Germany twice. I played Communist America. I did Democratic China. I conquered all of Africa with Britain. I cannot tell you how much I was waiting for a modern version. Then we get a game that has almost nothing in common with the previous game and gameplay no body wanted. After Cities 2 dropped I was done. I refuse to get another game until I see them drop a working, faithful release. All their games have rabid fans that like the specific gameplay each game provides. All of sudden they said who cares what style you like we are making them how our engineers can make it. Absolutely gutted over the years.
@@Sanvone They did say their problem with Victoria 3: It was too different from Victoria 2 quote 'Then we get a game that has almost nothing in common with the previous game and gameplay nobody wanted.' Paradox chose to switch things up with Victoria 3 and take the risk that their new approach might get more people interested in the Victoria IP. Many of their existing Fans didn't like the change. Pretty simple
@@lucyla9947 the course change is exactly what got me. Every game has a flavour like ice cream. Some people hate Vic but love HoI or EU. I like them all for their own unique focus. CK is historic sims. Vic is economic and diplomatic. EU is trade, the politics of hegemony and colonialism. HoI is war and logistics. Each has its own flow and they totally shat on that in recent years except CK3. In that case they made it even more sims which actually worked and everyone wanted. *Hint* *hint*.
Hehe... Yeah I think he used "agile" in the sense of "this doesn't seem to work let's pivot quickly". Like the adage that "a supertanker cannot do a U-turn easily". When headcount went beyond a certain threshold the momentum becomes too great to do significant pivoting.
I don't think agile software development is inherently bad. Now, are there people applying it badly, or doing bad things with it and justifying it with "agile"? Sure.
@AlucardNoir like with every other theory: if it never works in practice then it is a bad theory. Clearly it does not function in the software development world of large companies.
@@AlucardNoir Of course, it's quite often seen with the small, agile companies that produce something cool... and then sell it to a corporation. However, it's not really about the theory being hard to put into practice. The people pitching anything to corporations don't care about what they're selling, they just care about the money. The corporations aren't really looking to improve anything - they just slap the magic codeword and continue doing the same thing (maybe with adding extra daily meetings, because that's easy to do for the management, and doesn't require them to actually do anything). Agile _started_ with huge projects (that was the point, after all - have better ways of actually producing a viable, complicated product); but it's a lot easier to adopt the buzzword than to adopt the practice. Corporations are paperclip maximisers. You can't expect them to do anything right, or even make a fair attempt at doing something right. All the incentive structures are aligned with making the _appearance_ , but actually doing things right? Not on the menu. They also attract exactly that kind of person into management, and build up entire industries around them. The vast majority of software consultancy, agile or otherwise, is built around selling a product to corporate management; it's all about appearances and pointless conferences (let's not forget what "conference" _actually means_ - an _exchange_ of ideas, that's why people are supposed to come together. You don't need a "conference" to have a guy talk for an hour on a stage), certifications and all that. Heck, agile is kind of anti-corporate. It ultimately represents focusing very hard on what the customer actually needs, and doing exactly that. That's about 180° from your typical corporate software (and especially the way the sales and management work). The last thing a corporation wants is to satisfy a customer with a small, well developed project that ends (and with the customer satisfied at that). Or to aggressively prune the things that _don't_ work, or the people who _aren't_ contributing. None of this is what your typical corporate manager has any incentive in doing.
Strategy games are a niche, and the audience that consumes them is more discerning and I always assumed Paradox was different explicitly because they couldn't afford to be your typical big publisher, turns out they had to learn that the hard-way over the last few years.
The slide of Paradox started in 2016, when they went public. I remember it well because it happened to be right around the release of HoI4 and that's when I went from being a die-hard fan of Paradox to not spending any more money on their products. Because that's when they started releasing half-baked beta builds at full price and included features that should have been in the base game as part of paid expansions. I won't deal with companies who treat their devoted fanbase as idiots who will keep buying an endless stream of DLCs just to make their game feature complete 4 years down the line. Even though that's exactly what happened... but some people have more money than sense.
Have to admit, it's nice hearing a studio admit they effed up instead of what seems to be the fad now of just blaming their customers for being 'haters'.
I'm excited to see who gets to keep floating in the next few years with, what I feel, the consumers finally becoming a key influence (with our wallets) on how corps. will continue to practice
My prediction is that we will see the fall and bankruptcy of several old giants (Blizzard, Ubisoft) and Indie Devs will grow to replace them. The future AAA studios are ones we haven't even heard of yet.
It won't happen, because capitalism can't have that. Corporations will never give a fuck about the consumer, because they don't have to. Most people aren't dedicated enough for this shit, and shit like this usually doesn't even work. Boycotts don't work.
Shareholders only care about immediate profit of the current quarter, never the long term goals or reputation. If a companies reputation plummets, they can always sell out.
“I’m in charge and hate that we continue to sell terrible unfinished products I signed off on and it’s hurting our reputation. He are more unfinished products I signed off on though with an increased amount of mtx to make up for our losses.”
yes and no , games are complicated , and paradox does make very complicated games , there is reason why even indie games only do "very simple" games who lick lick surface of grand strategy , if it was so easy more people would do it. but they should put more faith into their fans , maybe less nickle and dime a bit (im aware complex games are hard and they need to make money) but they have niche and fans , lots companies would kill for having people who genuely buy lots games and DLC's , they need to put more quality and take their time rather then pump next big thing
I get your point but I disagree : stellaris is a good example : a space empire simulation with ton of DLC to tweak mechaniccs & add flavor : pick what you want and have fun.
I have stopped supporting Paradox for the simple fact that they have so much DLC for their games. It is an unreasonable number of DLCs and 99% of the time the DLC is simply content that should be in the base game at release. I refuse to support Paradox.
Ok, from the number of lies and half truths the guy doing the interview told, 100% he is in some form responsible for the company tanking. He also revealed paradox has no idea what it is doing, the success has been an accident or in spite of management, not because of it
They killed Star Trek Infinite for no real reason. Took a great idea, used it for a quick cash grab, then abandoned it as a barely playable game. Had so much potential, we haven't had a good strategy Star Trek IP for over a decade 😢
Yeah, calling it quits five months after its release is inexcusable for a franchise of this caliber. Granted, there were some things that were outside Paradox's control, like Nimble being liquidated and low player count. The possibility of failure should have been factored into the budget so that even if there is no dlc, the base game should be in a playable state. Currently, it is not the broken Federation mission tree comes to mind.
Stop letting shareholders dictate your schedule, processes, and budgets. If they want their returns; they should sit back, shut the fuck up, and let the people who know what they are doing do what they need to. These shareholders being so wishy washy over every little thing, the volatility of the stock market and their precious shares is ruining the gaming industry. Forcing a company to release a game before its ready just to meet quarterly deadlines or appease the shareholders is ONLY good for the shareholders - look at how Bobby Kotick steered Blizzard; the shareholders were happy but the tanked everything good about the company, and the moment the ship starts sinking - the shareholders already have the lifeboats ready to go - they will abandon ship and leave everyone to fend for themselves. Blizzard, for example, was a very profitable small company. After Mike made the terrible decision to merge with Activision - a bunch of old rich guys in business suits who don't even play videogames said "That isn't enough money." Since Blizzards fanbase was pretty filled out with all the people they were realistically going to get on board, as games like WoW, Starcraft and Diablo only caters to specific types of people - they had to figure out how to steal more money from their player base. Abusive and manipulative practices. Hence why Kotick, Zerza and others like him ruined their reputation by abusing their loyal fanbase. Paradox Entertainment has put themselves into a corner that can never be escaped. They have broken trust in a way that it will never be repaired to where it was before - they can go back to their roots, put out good games and keep to their word; and players will be happy, but they will remember when this wasn't the case. They will forever have to stick to this, with no deviation, because the moment they slip up and revert back to breaking trust - everyone will immediately remember what they did before. Once you've slid down the slope once, every other mistake puts you right back at the bottom regardless of how far up you made it.
Often I think about a Reddit post on the paradox sub I saw years ago. A guy posted a paradox tattoo he got and how hard he got roasted. I remember him defending his decision. Wonder if he has covered it up
Point of order: Double Eleven were not the original dev of Prison Architect, they were merely the prior dev (and probably not a well regarded one either.) Introversion was the original dev: Double Eleven took over development when PA was sold by Introversion to Paradox.
I bought City Skylines and was run out of it by their montization squeeze. I wasnt happy to find them handling Prison Architect. The original Devs of PA are super cool guys. The fact they were removed and have been silenced leaves me not thinking this will ever be good.
@@Waggabagaboo I wouldn't be too sure about that. I wouldn't be surprised if it were true, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it was entirely wrong and it was just paradox being incompitent/exploitative corporate muppets again. Paradox used to have solid good points to go along with, and counterbalance, their flaws. The good points have been growing less and the flaws greater ever since they became publicly traded. (and no, their DLC policy as of EUIV and CKII was not actually one of those flaws... not until they started abusing the hell out of it such that it no longer served it's initial purpose anymore many years later, anyway).
Personally I do not think that this industry will recover until all these old lords of the industry die off (such as Ubisoft) and new studios and publishers are formed by the disgruntled devs of them. We're seeing it start to happen and it needs to spread
When mods make more and better content than paradox DLC, the question becomes what the fuck am I even paying you for? Thank you for giving us a bare-bones structure, modders will fix it into a game for you.
It's a shame nobody is talking about how "Empire of Sin." Not just an apt title for Paradox, but they're still selling a season 2 DLC for $30 from 4 years ago on a game that never received a bug fix that makes season 1 playable. Nobody has received word, a refund, or even an apology. I'm sad that this comment will likely be lost too. Anyone interested in a class action lawsuit to get our money back?
1:28 I'm confused - how do those numbers show a total concurrent player count less than the earlier numbers? 6,527 + 5,484 is 12,011, which is higher than the 24-hour peak of 11,725. Sure, it's lower than the all-time peaks, but Skylines 2 is a year old at this point, so we'd expect a drop-off, right?
@@adriankoch964 No, actually they just followed their plan: Release the game, release 3 expansions (DLC) and then move on. Battletech is one of the very honest projects where everything worked out as planned with full transparency. As much as I'd like to see a few more expansions for that game, I also applaud to the fact that they stick to their communicated plans. The HBS Battletech game should be the role model for all game projects. Of course you could question why they only planned 3 DLCs - and the answer simply is: Licensing. The Battletech IP is notoriously hard to license, especially if it includes the 14 "Unseen" mechs (which ARE part of HBS's Battletech). Even Wizards of the Coast, the godfather of all CCGs (Magic: The Gathering), dropped their Battletech licence after a few years and also just 3 expansions. It's just not feasible for most. It's a miracle that Piranha Games can hold on to it for so long. MW:O and Mechwarrior 5 seem to be gold mines.
It's just too bad BattleTech while being a good game... is garbage in comparison to similar games from 20 years ago. Front Mission 5, a PS2 game from like 2005, had vastly better mechanics, more realistic mech combat, and more depth than BattleTech. It's actually comical.
They're just gonna try and build goodwill back up for the next cycle of trading it in for cash. If they think they can do the business equivalent of a builder-spender rotation they have another thing coming. People don't take well to being jerked around.
Paradox knows its reputation has been bad for years. I remember in 2018 when the community was starting to get up in arms with the amount of DLC that Crusader king 2 and Europa universal 4 had. Paradox knows it’s DLC policy and its games are bad. They know that it’s not a good thing if your player base has to have a tearless of what DLC’s to buy to enjoy. they know it’s bad when they have to release a subscription model just because they have too many DLC. They know it’s bad when it’s rare for them to have two good DLC’s back to back. They know their games are bad when they have to go so frequently on sale to get anyone to buy them. The most controversial thing I’ll say is this paradox, actively tries to make ties with its community in order to make sure that they are loyal to them. They know that if you feel like you have a connection to the community and into the company that you’re going to buy their DLC and games our question. Think of how many people know the developers names. that’s weird in any other community. Paradox knows the statement of sunken fallacy truly applies to their company and fan base.
My time with Paradox goes way back to EU1, I believe it was their first game around 2000. Probably because there is no genuine competition for the historical games they do, they have always attracted many passionate, uncritical fanboys! I think i first heard the term "fanboy" on Paradox forums, as someone was denying some bug existed. There was this argument that basically repeated many times for every game over the years (well, decades and probably still goes on). Variations on a theme of: Gamer1: "XYX feature doesn't seem to work properly, it makes no sense" FB1: "It's working perfectly, you just don't understand it". FB2: "You dont understand history, the game is right and you are wrong". FB3 "I don't see any problem" Gamer 1: "No. Here's some examples that just don't make no sense." FB4: "You're just a hater making things up." FB5: "Well if you don't like it, write your own history game". PDX Developer/Tester: "Actually, we just looked into it and there is a bug. We fixed it for the next patch". FB1: "That's whats so great about Paradox. What other company still improves their games months after release?" FB2, FB3: "hear, hear, all praise the Paradox. The next version will be the greatest game ever". later... Gamer 2: "That latest release...ANOther numbers don;t seem to add up correctly.." FB1: "Yes they do, get out of here you hater.." ....
Well Paradox should start by apologizing to Mariina and CO in general for forcing them to release CS2 in the state it was in. Because Mariina DID say that the game wasn't finished, but Paradox forced their hand into releasing it, and now look what's happened. DO NOT believe what he said about 'oh both CO and Paradox were in agreement to release it', because that's garbage and just damage control to cover his own backside. This happens all the time and not JUST Paradox. Publishers force developers to push out games that aren't ready all the time, and then cop the backlash afterwards. Remember, developers don't have the final say in games. Publishers do.
Both parties are responsible for the mess that is Cities Skylines 2. Paradox for financing an incompetent studio even after granting them a two year extension from when the game was originally supposed to release in 2021. Colossal Order for being an incompetent studio with poor leadership that can't fulfill deadlines and rely on modders to fix the work that they themselves aren't able to complete. Not sure what the percentages are for what games generate the most revenue for Paradox but I would venture a guess and say that the Cities Skylines franchise is probably at the top of the list. Because of CO failing to deliver what was promised and releasing the game early it forced Paradox to cut funding on other projects just to keep CO on life support. Life by You is now Death by Paradox because Paradox is being a lot more frugal and a lot more cautious as to what projects they are willing to fund. The days of milking Cities Skylines 1 are over and both Paradox and CO are struggling to stay funded and it is hurting everybody, especially the other devs and studios that get nowhere near the same level of funding that the Cities franchise gets.
@@thephantomchannel5368 Paradox might have given CO a 2 year extension, but if you know anything about game development, is that things CAN and DO happen in that period of time that leads to delays. Whether temporary or indefinite. Nothing goes according to plan. And like I said, at the end of the day it's not developers that make the final call for games. It's publishers. You can debate it all you like. Kind of going of topic here, but look at CD Projekt Red. They basically TOLD the publishers that the game wasn't ready with Cyberpunk 2077, and yet the 'publishers' forced the developers to push that game out the door. And it lead to the same disaster with the publishers being called out for it in a subsequent conference call. Yeah okay Paradox might have SAID that they and CO came to an agreement to release the game and not delay it, but how do we know that's REALLY true? Like I said, Paradox might have only said that for damage control reasons to protect their reputation.
What happened was a simple trade. They traded player goodwill for money. It was quite clear what happened after lamplighters league that they were in deep shit and pushed unfinished crap out to patch the holes, yet they refuse to talk about it. It might've been as bad as "push it or we're done" and hoped to fix it in the long run, but that was as usual very short sighted.
After Cities 1 added that shady and unnecessary "launcher", I remember changing my steam review from positive to negative, ending my review with something like: "good will is hard to earn and easy to lose." Since then they have worked so hard at the easy part, rebuilding that good will might as well be impossible.
I feel like these devs worked hard on these projects but ran into issues with project management- marketing, team size, productivity, leadership etc. Problems that they hoped a publisher could solve. Instead the publisher pushed for project control, fitting the game into the company model, questioning features, questioning the game's direction, the game's place in the market. And their solution was to delays, layoffs, more money onto the project, taking studios off the project. That is just bad abusive relationship between the developer and the publisher. The developer is struggling on a project they have no support on and the publisher just mounts preasure.
The Sim City IP simply laid there dead and buried, and paradox capitalized on it and released Cities Skylines to great acclaim. EA, watching CS receiving stellar praise and a large cut of a pie they haven't tasted for years finally spat out a new 'Sim City' worse than the original CS. Then how Paradox managed to fumble the ball for CS2 like they did is simply mind boggling. Inexcusable in all honesty, and the one in charge should've been fired for that blunder. Multimilion to billion-level potential franchise flushed down the toilet.
@@ulycination978 SimCity was an acclaimed brand - that EA fried by forcing always online, on servers that barely stayed online... ...this allowed Skylines to take over the city-building market. Paradox has now taken the Skylines IP out back and ended it with a slug of lead... ...poised for a massive take-over, is "workers &resources: soviet republic". I wouldn't at all be surprised if Paradox will have lost their golden goose, forever, just like EA lost one of theirs.
@@TheTotallyRealXiJinping They said that SimCity came first, but EA failed to Capitalize on it, so Paradox made Cities Skylines to grab that market. Cities Skylines then became the main hitter in the genre. Because of that EA tried to revive SimCity, fumbled the ball, which should've set up Paradox great for Cities Skylines 2 if it released in good state, but Paradox then also fumbled CS2.
wrong way around. EA released SC first and it was such a massive failure that CO with their history in transport sims decided to take a crack. There are some references to simcity in CS (the most obvious being the very limited size of the starting plot in CS).
Only game I played from them was Across the Obelisk. Niche game, quite fun, enjoyed myself with my friends. Quit as soon as they dropped DLC and the game into a separate ad-filled launcher. Smelled like greed, it was greed, and greed doesn't constitute good-natured or humble origins. That's it. That's my reason for quitting any of their products. Nothing personal, it's just business.
This just feels like they are internally blind to their own actual problems. Dozens of overpriced and underwhelming DLCs that make getting into their games break the bank. I watched them in real time tank Across the Obelisk. I've given up on ever actually playing Stellaris because the content I want is spread thinly across 50 DLCs. Their games don't just flop because they are buggy or unpolished, though that certainly doesn't help. They flop because every single person knows that if Paradox is associated with it, its going to be a DLC nightmare. They will shave off as much content as they can so they can sell it to you later. Thats their reputation. They clearly have no intention of changing.
@@Revkor Or you know, don't release arguably base game content spread across 50 DLCs that you have to individually pay for. Surprise surprise sale or no it just isn't worth the hassle to most people even if they have the money.
@@principalityofbelka6201 then that's a YOU problem then a them problem. maybe some of these ideas didn't come to them back when they made the game...or maybe the result of FEEDBACK fr4om players. stop acting like a brat and be sensible. most games years ago don't get such long term support.
I would say that we should never expect Paradox to be involved with the launch of any good or great video games ever again. Paradox is a publicly traded corporation, and so is interested exclusively in the increase of their stock price to benefit investors - video games are just the tool they use to extract money from gamers for the benefit of shareholders. I would wager that this event with no game releases is the product of some PR firm they hired to wash their terrible reputation in hopes of getting the company listed on a larger stock exchange. I would exercise extreme caution before purchasing anything this company touches.
how is 20-30€ overpriced for an expansion? I get complaining about quality of their new games and stuff like that but overpriced dlc? really? I feel like they are one of the few devs still selling dlcs at the pricing of the early era of gaming
@@tbrreversed6711 The early Expansion DLCs for CKII and EUIV were absolutely worth it. The model worked. Then some time later (right around the time they became publicly traded, to no one's supprise) they stopped actually using it as intended and started abusing it. Lower quality DLC, more stinkers, prices less in line with what you got, new games that weren't designed in a way that was actually compatible with the DLC policy so in practice you ended up back in the position of haing to pay for things you neither wanted nor needed in order to get what you were there for (and That being underwhelming, and the whole lot being over priced for what you got out of it (though not for the time, money, and effort it took to Make, again, see how the game was not designed to be compatible with the system) even if you Did want everything in it)... It spiraled, badly. Stellaris showed signs of the issue, HOI4 was where it got bad, EUIV DLCs degraded so badly that last I checked on of them was the lowest rated item on steam Of All Time (I don't think anything's managed to beat that? Worst rated Game of all time changes hands from time to time, I think that DLC still has worst rated Item locked in though) And that's ignoring their other failures and missteps.
@@BloodwyrmWildheart Guess Im just too oldschool of liking my games getting more content added over time, outside of just mods. What I dont like is when the content they add is half baked which has happened many times. But then again none of that has to do with the pricing which was the only thing I commented on
Meh I am not buying it. Paradox is still in full denial even as their sales are collapsing. A few months ago, I had a few arguments with PDX senior devs on the forums. When arguing they need to stop with their insane DLC model, they were in denial and end with stupid arguments like "sales are saying otherwise". The reality is they will see the company full collapse and go bankrupt before admitting they went too far with their scamy model of releasing indefinitely DLCs with base game being broken and glorified DLC pipelines. It is the classic case of corporate suits believing they are in control while they are multiple years late. Because when loyal customers stop buying, they dont come back.
Easy answer to fix Paradox dlc issue: after the dlc has been out for a year, create a package of dlc's that add up to about $50 worth and then all that "Year 1 package", "Year 2 package", and so on for $20-30 with occasional sales on the packages as well. It makes it less intimidating/expensive for new players to get into these long established games then
15:50 Bellular, tip for you, their problems crested over COVID, wherein weaknesses in management, oversight, and development may have been exposed. Our grievances with their practices predate that by a considerable time. Stellaris has been a train-wreck that never quite reaches its resting point. Horror-show. So that excuse doesn't wash. Thank you for the attention to this.
Paradox wasn't getting another dime from me after they sidelined BATTLETECH to try and make some cheap mech knockoff "Mechabella" or whatever. Those scumlords even tried to capitalize on Battletech's popularity and posted an ad for "Mechadelirium" on Battletech's steam updates section in your game library. Hopefully HBS reaches out to Microsoft to get greenlit for another game in the Battletech universe. Really disappointed you didn't touch on Battletech in the video, but I get it, BT universe is pretty niche.
Many years ago, I freelanced for a magazine with a very niche audience. Its focus was not games, but it's SO niche I don't want to say its name. One of the main things I did for them was media reviews. I was as honest as I could be in those reviews, and I guess it worked out well for everyone, because I did it for years. Well, during my time with that magazine Paradox was putting out some games that fit into that niche. So they reached out to the magazine to ask if we wanted to do reviews of those games. The EIC sent out a mass email asking who wanted to participate. I was stoked. I had been a Paradox fan for some time by then, so I immediately contacted the EIC and asked to be one of those reviewers. I got turned down flat - turns out they'd seen my media reviews and weren't thrilled. This was a good many years before GG, but after my experience with that magazine, I wasn't too surprised at the ostensible aim of the pro-GG people. Sad how Paradox has turned out since then.
If I have to define Paradox today, is...aimless in the worse sense possible. They are doing any kind of game that exist, shipping it way too early and seemingly by what you say not even realizing it is too early, pointing out the massive inexperience in the fields they are touching. But that's the problem: fields. They are literally trying to do everything for the sake of "impressing" someone (probably the investors) and by result nothing gets right, even their usual hits have done poorly and the most damning thing is that MODS are actually good and the mods are frustrated with the actual updates changing stuff that no one cares (see Stellaris) while failing to see what people desperately ask (see HOI4). The fact they realized " we overextended in stuff we have no investment in " is good, but the fact they speak of those products as " touch and go " it's worrying to me that this is just talk without facts, that they are gonna just shill out more aimless game and say " oh but we are not investing in this so it's bad who cares. " while still not refocusing on making their Grand Strategy good.
As somebody stung by Skylines II, Victoria 3 and recent DLCs I think this is a little bit reassuring to hear. Yes it's what we want to hear and actions must follow but if I look around at other publishers and dev companies I don't see many putting up their hands and owning their f*ck ups. Well done Paradox, you at least have won back my attention for now.
*I have no trust left for Paradox. They have done too many anti consumer things and treated dev's they 'own' very badly.* They murdered Sword of the Stars way back when for Stellaris, my gut and history shows me this is true.
► Enjoy games, without the bs: bellular.games
► Read the latest Loading Screen: bellular.games/loading-screen-the-proof-people-will-buy-70-dollar-games/
I had Paradox dev's/moderators call me a liar when I wrote in my Negatiive Review that they removed a tniy vanilla game options and then put it behind a DLC paywall. I made them so mad, but it was true. Even the latest DLC for that very old game EU4 has an empire option that is only available to DLC owners and everyone else can go fk off.
I have no trust left for Paradox. They are as bad as those other triple AAA"s.
Bit late on the party to this one Paradox has had a pretty good last few quarters wth some of its more major games. Victoria 3's Spheres of Influence have raised player counts alognside being the most sold dlc. And crusader kings 3's recent dlc roads to power has had similar results. And plus a new game "project caesar" which is most likely eu5 seems to be set to come out some time next year and has mostly positive feedback from the community.
your games are questionable tbh, and your moderators issue banwaves..
@@spadegaming6348 yeah dont listen to bellular news, the guy is scrambling to look for reasons to call paradox bad, because simply one game called city skylines 2 failed at launch, but the video wouldn't make much ingagement if it was about that because its old news.
but youll just eat that blizzard shit up right?
I don't know why 5 years ago someone at Paradox said said. "We have a nice small company that makes fun if buggy niche games with loyal communities. Why don't we copy the sales strategy of the most greedy company that everyone universally hates? That is sure to work out well"
They went publicly traded shortly after or shortly before Stellaris released, that's why. (I can't recall the exact date)
The owner himself said "This won't change anything" pffft.
@@Verdiumm This is the answer. Paradox games were a bit expensive back then, but they've gone through the roof ever since, not just in terms of DLC price/quantity of content ratio, but in how they behave during sales.
Once a company goes public the loss of direction and drop in quality to the consumer is practically inevitable.
@@toketsupuurin That is because how it is constructed. Saying that the corporations are not at fault is probably going a bit too far, but the way public companies work is, they always have to make more profit. Private companies are well with living with the high profits they have, if it's enough, it's great. And maybe increase a little. Public companies - shareholders only make money, if the profit itself keeps rising. They make profit from the increase. So the managers are elected and tasked with always getting a bit more money out of the costumer's pockets than the quarter before. Once a company goes public, it doesn't matter that a forum they host has guides of decades on it. It gets deleted, because doing that increases profits.
All that goes well while the market share increases. However, at a certain point, there's a cap. All people that can possibly be reached are reached. That's when it begins to turn toxic. Managers still have to get an increase next quarter. So now comes the phase of getting ever greedy and pulling the last of a penny out of the pockets, whereever it is possible. That's how that system works. And that's why we see what we see with several big companies now turning to ever greedier practices.
Welcometo the rat race of havingto please shareholders.
Quite honestly the stock market should be limited to core commodities only, venyute and investment capital is more of a cancer causing processed sugar than a reliable source of company nutrition.
If you hate your reputation, don't do bad things. Honestly it's amazing how stupid people in power can be.
Just like sociopaths, they're never sorry for the things they have done but they're sorry they got caught doing them and now have to pay for it.
@@SagentemusIs that sociopaths? Sounds more like narcissists.
Narcissistic rage happens whenever anything threatens their ego.
@@Sagentemus ceo's are more likely to be sociopaths than random people
@@glawenclattuc3127 Difference is that narcissists aren't sorry they got caught either, they're mad you caught them and blame everyone else.
@@SeventhSolar They respond with narcissistic rage.
As in, they direct their anger at the person criticising them because they are a threat to their ego or status.
@HGTudor has done very good explanations of this.
They could always be BOTH narcissistic AND a sociopath 😂
Trust takes years to build, but moments to destroy. Paradox has a lot of work ahead of itself if it seeks to redeem itself.
Weird sentiment considering Paradox went the "death by a thousands cuts" approach to slowly draining their reputation rather than it being abrupt.
They arnt going to redeem themselves by outright admitting that they need to lean into their "lets bleed our IP's dry by making 1000 DLC's approach". I genuinely think Paradox might not survive all of this, and honestly good riddance.
@@harbhub I mean, yes, they had been slowly bleeding away the good will people had for them for years, but they did go through a pretty abrupt dip in trust with the latest cluster of failed launches and cancelled/delayed projects. There's a bit of distance between "I don't like this" and "I'm done with this".
@@Axeface Tencent will bail them out like they are with Ubisoft.
@@Axeface you aren't being realistic, they are absolutely going to survive and have their core games like eu4, hoi4, and stellaris with tons of players despite eu4 being ancient. People actually like vic3 now and this is all without mentioning ck3's huge dlc success and the oncoming "project cesar" you speak as a doomer who doesn't know shit about paradox but yeah I am glad they realized their non-historical stuff is a flop.
The fact that Paradox is even alleging taking accountability is a bit of a shock. Still, I'll believe it when they actually start DOING IT.
Yup. Facta non verba.
Don't hold your breath - you wount survive it.
This is nothing but an act; hot-air.
I mean they are giving multiple free dlc for eu4 that they say should have been there form the start. that’s a start so if they do that for other games to keep them updated and if dlc are needed for basic mechanics then that’s great.
@@MetricOwl-tv8zx
I think they gave away "Beaches" for Skylines II as well... a DLC that was reaching single-digit like on Steam... a DLC so bad they refunded any poor suckers that paid for it. (Well... except us REAL suckers that ordered the Deluxe DLC.)
I'm thinking anything Paradox gives away for free - is something that they might be sued if they tried to charge for it.
@@yammoyammamoto8323 well I don’t think they have been sued for it yet.
Trust is earned, not begged.
Companies invested so much shit into brand name recognition, and became reliant on it, it they aren’t food manufacturers.
Coca-cola has not changed their product. They can rely on the brand to sell itself.
But with games every product is it’s own brand, and while the manufacturer can influence people to buy games more willingly, you still have to make good products.
@@defaulted9485 and once lost, can be impossible to get back.
if something is yours, you don't need to beg for it. if something isn't yours, you will never earn it.
@@azumi5459 if something is yours, but you want to sell it, you can't do whatever you want with it, and still expect someone will buy it, it has to meet the buyers standards, not the sellers standards.
Anything with a paradox logo is instant fail for the next 10 years easily. If they can show they have fixed their mistakes only then will I give them a penny in pre orders. Not a day before
Their business model was only tolerable while it was making genuinely great content. But if you release disappointing or unstable DLC and games it doesn't fly. You need good will to get away with charging $300 or more per game after all the DLC and expansions are factored in.
And also you can not release half assed games because they free labour a.k.a community, would finish it for you for free. This also killed Bethesda now
They still make amazing games. CK3, EU4, Vic 3, HOI4, and Stellaris are nothing short of incredible (maybe exclude Vicky for now). HOI4 even after being released more than 8 years ago gains more and more daily players. IDK about their reputation as a publisher, but as a developer they create games no other studios ever touch. Even if others did, I doubt they'd reach that quality.
DLC policy is simply their way of staying afloat. You can't expect to stay alive while just giving away free features. Besides, you get 1000s of hours out of their games anyway. Other than Sims, I don't know if there's such a SP game
It seems their current model is to release a game, then release a near unending stream of DLC for it to maximize the profit on their investment. The problem is that approach usually ends up with base games that have minimal effort and aren't fun. They might become fun if you add the DLC, but that comes at a total cost which is significantly higher than the base game and people will start to question the value proposition of what you're offering.
Yeah, like Stellaris, I didnt mind the DLC's that added wide mechanics to the base game as it was pretty viable to play however you wanted and they usually gave the modders new tools to work with, then they got a new head dev who started lecturing the community about 'managing players power fantsy' and 'balance' and the patches and DLC switched to content that forced his favoured his preferred style of play, haven't touched the game since let alone bought a DLC.
@maddlarkin tbh I'm not the biggest fan of Stellaris because I like to see familiar countries or leaders. I know for other games when they messed they fixed it. As for hoi4 and eu4, they added a lot of old DLC mechanics and contents to the base game anyway, so you don't have to spend a bajillion dollars when you start the game in 2024. They currently have 40 dollar bundle for eu4 with full DLC and game. They'll be releasing eu5 in the second half of 2025 probably, that's why. But eu4 with all of the DLCs are enough to keep one busy and entertained for two years without any other game anyway.
The tragedy of course is nobody was even expecting Cities Skylines 2 anytime soon so they had no deadline and could've spent the time actually polishing the product and letting people enjoy a few free DLC for the first one to tide them over but they couldn't wait and paid the price for releasing a buggy mess.
CS2 was in development well before Covid (I did a playtest in the Paradox office in Stockholm in 2019 on an early build so I know) and pre-development somewhere around 2018. I don't know what went wrong, but Paradox isn't big enough to develop a game for 6-8 years, so from a financial standpoint I'd say it had to be released.
I also know that CO had problems with CS1, rather big problems, up until just weeks before release (tunnels didn't work amongst other things and where very close to be cut from the game), so maybe they banked on being able to fix it before release this time around too but it didn't work out.
No, they always have deadlines. That is what the earnings call and shareholder meetings are - its a bunch of people in suits who have no interest in videogames or the wellbeing of players, but know that videogames make money pushing for returns on their investments - at all costs. They are more concerned with their short term earnings than the long haul. Mostly because they are already old boomers who don't have much time left and want to make even more money before they die.
I look forward to it being fixed, but yeah, I wasn't expecting it for YEARS.
I don't even mind that the game is in a poor state even now - its that we were actively lied to about how the game would play. The game we were shown and the game we got aren't the same.
And Early Access exists for this reason - releasing a game early with the promise of finishing it.
@@andromidius You were lied to about how it played?
How?
It's Skylines 2. What did they do, make you think it was Sims?
As an economics professor asked my class day one "what is the most valuable commodity in the world?" Flurry of answers follow "gold","lithium","pork bellies ". He waits a bit and the says while they were all good answers they were all wrong and then said the most valuable commodity is consumer confidence. To quote him " It takes years to build, it cannot be counterfeited, and used unwisely it can be lost in an instant. Our whole economy from the highest priced commodity to the dollar itself is based off consumer confidence, so if you know what your doing, never give them a reason to doubt."
All the students must have been at the "Greed is good! Screw them over however you can" lecture.
Yes but the fastest way to gain that consumer confidence in the stock market is to cut costs and time. Which is how we got here in the first place.
@@XMysticHerox your mistaking gdp with consumer confidence.
You can have high gdp with low consumer confidence(usually right before a bust/market run)
@@fransmith3255 I mean most econ classes fall into that most of the time, they ain't teaching communism(other than theory and history), no matter what fox says.
@@fransmith3255 He meant to not do anything untoward to destroy confidence, not to hide it, but it was an econ class.
AAA prices plus hundreds of dollars worth of dlc for games that run like shit and has less in it then the previous game.
they make niche genres that other developers don't touch for whatever reason
@jurb2941 That's the problem with niche genre: Some Indie devs can't make and compete with it because the genre requires a lot of mechanics or foresight or calculations that costs too much money to properly implement and could put them out of business (for example the Total War series)
AAA developers/publishers never touch the genre because of how niche it is and thinking that it won't bring enough profits or they do touch it but it usually ends up being dog water quality.
@@jurb2941 Workers and resources shits on cities skylines and it an indie dev
@@shaynegadsden W&R is a surprisingly solid game and I love its quirky premise. It's like they threw Tropico 4, SimCity, and Transport Tycoon into a blender to see what the smoothie would taste like.
@@SimuLord it tastes like concrete and asbestos and I want more servings
Their haunting problem is DLC bloat. Almost every "Solution" to this problem they have come up with has been anti consumer. I have no pity for them nor patience for abusive relationships.
I could live with DLC Bloat....
What I can't live with - is what they did to Skylines II.
That pile of garbage is still unplayable - a full year after its "release".
I see Early Access games that are WAY more functional than this tripe.
DLC bloat to me, used to be tolerable because good DLC gives you several long playthroughs of content. Sometimes a DLC these days is content you won't even use in a single playthrough at all. All about the value.
DLC is a good thing that, used as part of a "hobby shop" monetization model (think model railroading; you get a base set for Christmas, then five years and hundreds of dollars later, you've got a sprawling layout taking up an entire room or a basement or a garage), can make long-lasting long-tail games that people love (looks fondly at American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck 2.)
Used for evil, you get what Paradox, Dovetail, and EA Maxis have done with games like Train Sim World, Sims 4, and Paradox's first-party grand strategy games.
Though you still buy
I never could get into HOI4 or CK3, but from a distance it almost seems like their DLC each are paid overhaul updates that overtime completely upend the core gameplay loop by just stacking more and more new features. It reminds me a lot of modding communities that just go wild with adding more and more stuff with no concern about how it all fits together.
In the aughts, Paradox was right up there with Bethesda on my "shut up and take my money" instant-buy developer list.
Every time I think my own self has gone downhill in the last 20 years, I just remember "you could be worse, you could be Paradox, Bethesda, Blizzard, the Creative Assembly......"
I think my point here is that I miss 2004.
I think everyone who was around from the early '90s to late '00s misses those days. The tech wasn't as impressive, but the companies put in far more effort and care.
With the way the big "AAA" companies are going right now, we might be on a return to those days. At this rate, it's not unreasonable to think most of the big companies might start caving in. We'll probably be left with mostly indie devs and a few mid-size studios. Probably 1-2 "AAA"s that survive this, but not anything like they are today.
@@RookMeAmadeus "We'll probably be left with mostly indie devs and a few mid-size studios."
You say that like it's a bad thing. I think it is _hilarious_ that the number-one top-rated game on Steam in terms of quantity and ratio of reviews was made by one guy in his bedroom (Stardew Valley, at least according to the Steam 250.)
In fact, most of the best-loved games on Steam that Valve didn't make are indie and AA titles. That says something about the future of the medium.
Public shares ruin so much
@@SimuLord Creative assembly isnt that bad, yes they are assheads who lie to us all the time, but their main games for the last decade are very solid.
you maybe dont like the total warhammer games, but they run well, have dlc with good value (most of the time) and have very solid gameplay mechanics.
the only issue is the mod support.
@@SimuLord I never said it was a bad thing at all. That's probably the best outcome we could hope for at this point. The only thing better would be all the big companies firing their dead weight execs, buying back their shares, going private, and getting back to actually being game companies, but that's not happening.
Just another round of "we are sorry, we are listening, we will improve"? Anyone still believes that corpo speak?
definitely not, but we can leave them the benefit of the doubt and watch closely what they are doing
@@pepinlebref7585 Corporations never deserve the benefit of the doubt.
I totally believe that we'll hear that again in a year.
This is the benefit of the doubt that a corporate company deserves in this day and age: I'll buy your game when you finish fixing it, and what have you done for me today?
@@pepinlebref7585 why would you ever leave them the benifit of the doubt? Do you usually get conned in life? Im guessing yes.
Their first mistake was going public with an IPO. Thats when I knew things would start going downhill
It's oh so true
Oh God I didn't realize it was a public company. It's over
@@Clone683 agree, listing doesn't seem to work for games, it's where everything consumers hate is coming from
Why do companies even do this? For a one-time cash injection?
@@elFulberto Founders make money, they can in theory get a cash injection to expand or buy new kit, some prestige attached to it, can make getting funding via debt facilities etc easier (which is not inherently a bad thing since cash flow can be smoothed instead of being block buster dependent etc). Downside is that the financial reporting and compliance obligations shoot up and there is ever increasing public scrutiny/ analyst opinion on what you're doing and you might now have 20 owners rining your CFO daily to demand a chance of course.
Paradox:"You can pay 300$ to be a beta tester"
Well, beta-testing is done so it can be fixed. This is more like writing to a Santa.
I had that feeling when the alpha of smite 2 came out at a price tag of 50 dollars. What the shit lol
Paradox has a business model that requires excellence from their side. With all the DLCs they are also raising a big entry blocking wall for potential new players, meaning that you have to make sure that your current customers stay hooked. If they lose them, they will be in big trouble
Yeah, I want Stellaris. Looks fun but the insane amount to get the full game would be insane. No game is worth like $300 which is about the cost of Stellaris with the DLCs. No is fun at 300 bucks.
The way they treat people on their forums is also a big problem. If you aren't a company shill, you get banned for trivial reasons, even when the action commited is completely warranted. That's why I haven't brought a new P'dox game since Stellaris. Once the DLC for games I have run out, the wallet closes permanantly. I've played their games since EU1, so I was among their original customers. No more.
@@CaseyLynn-i7u Em... You do know that most DLC are not "essential"? Don't trust me? Search for DLC tierlists that release every year. Only few DLC are "must haves". Basic game needs like 2 DLC at the moment to my moment (Utopia that should be part of base game with how good it was (but usually it is part of starting deals) and Galactic Paragons). If you are to make good reasonable purchase on Stellaris you easily can get more than 3 hours of entertainment per each $. Difficult proposition to beat for other ways.
Also if you can wait for sales. Getting all of that for 50% or less isn't that rare. Just takes some patience instead of "I want my fun and I want it now".
It honestly feels like they have a life-service like business model.
@kurnugiakurn3567 It's not the worst thing, in the past atleast with Stellaris, buying a DLC once or twice a year isn't terribly expensive if you get to refresh and the total lives for up to thousands of hours it's a good deal.
But that does obviously raise a huge wall for new players who will feel they're missing out and they don't know enough which DLC they'd even want.
The solution would be to always have a reasonable price base package that includes majority of the older DLC in it.
5:20 It reads like "there are too few players to push hundreds of dlc's on".
My thought exactly.
It's really hard to get into a Paradox game when there is like $4000 worth of DLC for every game. I like CK3, but the pricing on the DLC is insane.
Yep , any older game you are interested in has lots of DLC , the cost is absurd but their are so many DLC its too much hassle to even look at them all , i just dont even bother with them anymore.
@@gingerbill128 I tried to get into HOI 4, the amount of DLC is staggering. At least I got into CK3 at the ground floor.
This is a 4X i general. I play total war warhammer and cant spend that much money on another strategy no matter how hard I would like to try stellaris.
The worst part about CK3 is that the price for the dlc is absolutely ludicrous. 30€ for a dlc ???? I recall when CK2's were like 15€ (and also, we're not even comparing the quality of the games or their dlc here, because it would make it even more jarring. There's no way you can convince me that Royal Court is worth even 10 bucks, let alone 30).
They have simultaneously driven up the price whilst the quality of the content plummeted
@@kapixniecapix3869 I remember having a lot of fun with Galactic Civilization 2 back in the day. Not sure if it's on steam
DLC prices climbed to fast for too little content. To where they are trying to use a game by game, not whole catalog, subscription offerings which is a ridiculous level of greed. Basically they want you pay the full price of the game each year you continue to play it if you choose not to buy all the DLC up front. Why this is a problem is in some of their games older DLC can be made obsolete by later patches or other DLC in effect having customers pay full price for a DLC that has no real effect
@@andromedach inflation basically. Sure not just that but it’s one of many reasons
@@thehiddenpyro1983 Ah yes, helping cause the problem so they can ask more muneh.
We have a saying in Dutch that basically translates to:
Trust comes on foot but leaves by horse.
2:07 I feel like something got cut in a weird way here.
Cant wait for bloodlines 2 (my favourite IP) to flop, suck, be forgotten and never be touched again. Thanks Paradox.
You make it sounds as Paradox wants it to flop and be a failure, like it makes a lot of business sense, and also that if paradox didn't took it, it would get developed by itself, maybe the wind would do it for you and release on steam.
And yes, I also vamp masq 2 will not be a great game, maybe not even good, but HARDLY it should be called as "intentional"
At least you can't be disappointed now.
@@DácioNunes-l1v
hahaha.... not caring what state something is.. EQUALS "Wanting it to fail".
Running into someone because you didn't break, or turn - makes it your fault.... it makes you a murderer. Releasing a broken pile of trash isn't by accident - it is "I don't care what the so-called customers thing - they're just 'gamers', I just want my money".
They. Are. Scammers... Crooks.
@@DerFreiegedanke
For sure!
Oh its going to be horrendous from what I've seen in the trailer
if they cared at all about their rep they would just cancel it
but they don't really care
and are going to just kick that trash onto consumers
which is why i don't believe they will change
Paradox in a nutshell: "Hey, here's a $60,- game! But to get the full experience you need to spend $2500,- in DLC."
Paradox = pirate it so you don't have to spend $600 for all the expansions to get current when you pick it back up.
This.
Yep. Corporations for stellaris was my last purchase. How much would it cost if you would like to play stellaris, hoi iv, victoria 3, europa universalis and crusader kings 3 with all the dlc?
@@Jansmaaa Stellaris Ultimate Bundle: $209
Hearts of Iron IV Ultimate Bundle: $176
Europa Universalis IV Ultimate Bundle: $329
Crusader Kings III Collection: $143
Grand Total: $857
@@Veylon and victoria 3 is 50 to 80€ depending which edition you get. The dlc is 28% off right now so it is only 38,56€! So a total of $977 ish! But wait! What if you want to play a city builder game? Cities skylines 2 is a bust so better just get the first 1. The bundle is -9% at the moment for a small price of 376,15€ jesus christ
gods bless CreamApi
I don't care about their reputation to release unfinished games, it's common these days.
I hate their reputation of splitting a game into 100 individual DLCs that together cost $500.
Yeah, the reputation of releasing unfinished games dates back 30 years almost. That part we can live with.
I loved old 2016 Stellaris, it was worth the asking price and was a full game on its own merit, but man did they milk it to death with story packs and race packs that cost too much while adding very little. Expansions are not a bad thing, they can be a good way to improve a released game, the problem is we're not getting much Shivering Isles but we are getting a whole lot of Horse Armour.
yee if they keep old prices and sales, like for stelalris until 2 yers ago it go like new dlc have no sale, dlc befor that as well or sometiem 33% dlc befor that one alywas when it posible have 33% CUT, AND EVRY THING DLC BEFOR THSAT HAVE 66% CUT!! now for two dlc you have non to 15% cut and them it go betwen 20-50% and biger price ...
and no im not mind of haveing 9999 dlc ofter like a 10 yers if game is good but not only prices go to big and sale to low, dlc itself break game, today we stil lhave vasalisation problem made by overlord, first contact break half of non english texst in game and some of it are still in game. way to many time they take simple part of game tha work of and make it into advanced one that work wery well at first, but whne new one come out the old one break becoe interactions or is left half end, if they spam us sotry packs that new civic + origins i would total go into that but now they kinda break game
you should still care about that
I swear, these AAA companies are all going to off themselves in the long run...
Is paradox even considered AAA? The stuff they make is pretty niche and has a monetization model that would make EA blush.
@@txflood2519 Some will say yes, others will so no, here's the definition of what makes a company AAA.
"AAA stands for "triple-A" and refers to a classification of video games that are high-budget, high-profile, and often very popular."
If we're going by those same standards, then yes, it would be considered as such. (Apparently, the buzzword was used by the CEO- at that time - , Fredrik Wester, in trying to transition their games into that standard.)
But in all honesty, I don't think AAA should mean anything anymore all things considered with companies like Ubisoft, EA AND Blizzard shitting the bed, so much.
I mean... At the current pace I can see us losing half the AAA out there in another decade/short run.
Wouldnt be the worse thing in the world
Idk, I dont think you could consider any of their games triple a. They most certainly are double a games though. As rule of thumb triple a games generally have n
Budget of 10 million usd or higher. Double a has around 1 to 9 million. Single a games usually lower then a million.
But i agree on paper paradox has the capacity to produce triple a games.
Maybe the game they currently are working on has triple a scale.
Paradox currently has 5 projects which seem to be on eternal life support. They are currently developing a new game wich seems to be eu5 or at least that is what people think it is. Paradox likes to juggle alot at once. I don't think they have the means to produce triple a games because of this. But without knowing their budget for their games it is difficult to know.
Though I dont think they produce triple a games.
At least they don't have Creative Assembly's reputation, so... there's that.
Yet.
Maybe. But they are quickly developing a reputation that's similar to Electronic Arts.
Lol. Paradox and CA are two rotten peas in a pod.
CA has actually been working to turn their reputation around with actions rather than words.
@@R3GARnator Yeah. CA's latest stuff has been a promising direction. It still will take time to see if it's a legitimate change for the better, or a big public show of 'look how better we are' before going back to trash, but there's at least reason for cautious optimism there.
I'm looking at Paradox a similar way. It's good that they're aware of how badly they've stuffed it. Better than Bethesda or Blizzard, who both like to take shits then tell us it's the best stuff the world has ever seen. But there's a long climb from 'aware' to 'fixed', and promises alone are not nearly enough to get my money. They have a lot of work to do before I'd even consider purchasing one of their games without a lot of independent players convincing me that I won't be disappointed again.
Paradox used to be such a great company but their eyes were bigger than their stomach and now they just vomit everywhere.
How do you look at City Skylines 2, a game that you built and know it's both buggy as hell and under optimized beyond belief and go "yeah, it's time to launch it"?
You either hire a proper QA team or have your entire team do QA for a whole week or you sell it to the public and face the backlash of basically making the people pay to be beta testers.
I just don't know how that goes through an entire dev department and everyone seems to be ok with it. That screams "we're tired of this crap, ship it and we'll fix and improve stuff based on feedback".
@@SuperfluousIndividual to be simple, their responsibility are divided between all worker, more worker, less individual responsibility and more people trying to earn money while working the least amount
It's called "shareholders." They dictate when things are launched, not the hasn't-been-a-thing-for-over-a-decade QA team.
You decide it's time to launch by looking at your company's financial spreadsheets, not the game itself. According to the spreadsheets, CSII was released at almost the perfect time. Although anyone who actually looked at the game would have realized it needed a lot more time in development.
It was like no one person for the company ever played CS2 for 5 minutes. If they had they would have seen it was a piece on trash. They knew it was trash and wanted a big quarterly report and launched it. They simply said, "f*ck them." Why? A good CS2 game would have been a license to print money. Launch a game base bare bones as you could but actually worked. Then tac on 50 DLCs at $25+ each added content they left or on prepose so that could add in later as a DLC. CS2 would have been a cash cow. Instead, the CS2 hardly worked at all and a year later it still a f*cking mess.
Higher-ups treat QAs as bug spotters. They're not going to trust QAs to give actual "is this game ready" type of feedback.
As for management, they just released it at the correct time to make their profit spreadsheet look good. Which, yeah, was awful in the long term, but publicly-traded companies are all about the very short term. And of course, now it's the slightly longer term, and now they're seeing the downside.
You mention that The Chinese Room have a good track record. I'd suggest they don't: they primarily make walking simulators -- Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture -- and there's very little to most of their games.
Even A Machine For Pigs, a sequel to a game they didn't make that had puzzles and monsters to avoid, was considerably stripped back compared to the original game and had monsters that were absolutely no threat whatsoever.
Personally, I don't see how they can make an RPG on the level of Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines without some serious compromises.
The canceled HSL version looked much more like a Bloodlines 2. Not sure what the Chinese Room is doing, but what they have shown to us doesn't give me any Bloodlines vibes. 😟
Actually they were almost entirely replaced when Sumo Interactive bought them, the only game that the current TCR has released is Still Wakes the Deep, a game very much praised by a lot of critics and players alike, especially for its atmosphere and tone.
I'd argue that atmosphere and tone is pretty important for a VTM game, and for most parts, surpassing the original bloodlines in gameplay quality won't be too difficult outside of the story and characters, where the original Bloodlines shined (mostly because it otherwise didn't shine at all).
i refunded when i saw this and the dev logs, glad that i did since i would have not gotten bloodlines 2 but a "spiritual successor" -.-
Their crime is that they make a genre of game that you don't particularly like? That's like... your opinion man.
Every single modern game now even supposed 'singleplayer' ones are live service first, gameplay not even second, it's usually considered an afterthought, if they can't package half-arsed customisation into micro-transactions disguising it as content they take DEI money under the table to push the message if they do those crappy walking simulators and this is the only reason these companies exist. I think this is a big part of why they try to buy out and farm old IPs so much because going back to the conversation of reputation to stay relevant to the topic because they know their original titles can barely stand up on their own especially with the DEI crap shoved in it at every opportunity.
i think that most of the problem is the rabid fanboys of paradox that have held them floating for so long.
there has been countless time i have seen compaints over bugs on a paradox game but most of the respone is, "oh it always is, but they always fix it in the end"
and no, i am not saying that liking a company or their games is wrong, but when they treat you like a mushroom it is a abusive relationship
Paradox are the only ones that release grand strategy games. They can do all this shit because they have no real competitor, so all we as fans can do is deal with it.
@@greymagic857 i cant help but laught at this, at first i just nodded my head and then i took a second and did a mental translation.
so, what you are really saying is this
yeah, he/she abuses me, but they are the only one that loves me so i will put up with it
@@pjodron I agree but the only five options we have are a, deal with the abusive behavior and still play the games we enjoy ,b, pirate the games which could lead to a number of other problems,c,create our own games in the same genre which likely would be both expensive and risky,d, get enough people and money together to buy a majority of Paradox’s stock which would likely more expensive or,e, stop playing the games we enjoy. Which seems the best option to you all?
@@brianschonfeld1733 Over time, you may well stop enjoying them. I started with EU1 and have had just about all their grand strategy games on release since then. Time played probably peaked with EU2 , HOI, V2 and CK2. From hundreds of hours, down to 20 with V3 before getting bored of it. Eventually, I can see they are all much the same game, with different veneers. Basically huge spreadsheets, with a nice looking map on top. (I am a sucker for a good map in a game!). The spreadsheets have hundreds of numbers, most of which are of little importance. The art is identifying the 3 or 4 numbers that matter and keep them going in the right direction. Then you have the usually poor tutorials, leaving most of the numbers and relations unexplained. So a whole business has grown up of YT tutorials explaining it.
Seems to me that overall, their games are hard to learn, easy to master. To an extent, learning the game *is* the game. So then they release a DLC to scramble up the numbers and the whole process repeats.V3 is probably their last game I will buy. But then I said that about EU3, HOI3, CK2, EU4 ,Stellaris etc etc 🙂
No action, just a load of hot air. Reaks of desperation.
$1000's of DLC is not a good start.
I grew exhausted of Paradox's non-stop dlc bullshit years ago, and just started ignoring their games entirely. They could start rebuilding my trust by releasing games that are actually complete at launch.
THEY ARE. take hearts of Iron 4. if they waited to release with every country had a focus tree we would never see the game. they still be tryign to make it with no income stream.
Meh the only reason Paradox releases focus trees is because it is the easiest minimalistic "content" to sell as DLC
Dont confuse causes with consequences @Revkor
@@Cottage_Punk dude the game is several years old. look at thwe base game now. heck go ahead turn off all your DLCS and see what you have now. that takes time AND money.
@@Revkor we should have had basic focus trees for every country in the first year. they arent much work if they dont include new mechanics.
we also should have had some minor updates to those country specific mechanics, just a couple of buttons to click to give countries let countries like the US interact with new features.
@@Revkor Look, I am a software dev myself so I can tell you the national focus type of DLC Paradox has been mass producing for years is the most basic stuff ever produce. I could literally do it on my own 2 months after starting coding. I feel embarrassed for them when they publish a dev diary about it. It does not cost 100s of $ to produce this type of "content". You need a very small team of 5 people max if they are all raw beginners (graphical art & QA included).
@8:20 Imagine if every new Minecraft Block was a separate paid DLC. That's Paradox's business model.
thats stupid, they make game for intelligent people, intelligent people usually have lots of money. That is the one reason they get away with their price model.
@dl3472 ok redditard
@@dl3472 lmao what?
@@geehod_jimmy3544 lol he liked his own comment
It would cost around the same since Minecraft takes 4 years to release 3 blocks and a passive mob
I'm starting to see we are entering a new age, The Death of Big Game studios.
CA, UBISOFT, PARADOX, BETESHDA and many more.
Hopefully the new studios rising up will learn from these mistakes..
Gaming, affordable computers, internet culture and global economy will be dead before that happens.
Hope you like trying to find good games in bargain bins across a mere 3 states and playing them with a playerbase of 5000.
If game is cool then it can have 20 players for what I care, lol.
Actually popularity isn't always a good thing. CK3 vs CK2 is good example. CK3 is probably fine game overall but it is aimed at a lot more casual audience and systems in CK3 just aren't scarifying of you're not casual gamer - so that includes most of CK2 playerbase, bunch of history nerds who don't mind overcomplicating things too much. CK3 is aimed more for average Joe, at the end of the day there is a lot more people like that. Plenty of games gone that route.
Though I have to admit, this approach just makes more money if marketing reach the new ajdiences and older fans also will help with spreading the news.
@@yaelz6043 Why do you think this?
That is bull sh!t. They wanted the money, did not CARE about the game... Both companies AGREED to release it... they KNEW
and wanted the cash
THIS THIS THIS THIS!!!
Just like someone not breaking, nor turning for a pedestrian would be a murderer...
...so are Paradox CEO, and board of directors crooks and scammers.
Yeah. Both managers agreed that they liked hitting their quarterly performance targets and getting a bonus. I'm sure if they had asked on-the-ground developers and testers, those would have said the game isn't ready.
Unfortunately, they will never flat out say the real reason they release such bad products because they know it's a terrible look.
Of course it's nonsense. The contract says Paradox can mandate when it's time to be released, and speaking out against them is suicide for any dev that wants to EVER do business with ANY studio. Paradox has done this to plenty of other games and studios in the past, and their actions have thoroughly torpedoed those studios and killed potential franchises as a result. The only thing that's new is that Paradox has realized they've screwed up enough that they're feeling repercussions from a dwindling user base.
@@CHCrux
It's the willful choice of quick money over long term brand respect. Team17 was once the world leader in technology and game-play, then they chose to release budget games at full price...
...today they are a Worm-producing laughing-stock of the gaming community. They tried to become relevant again, but after nuking ones reputation so completely, I don't think there is any coming back.
Shorting the stock is a sure-fire move.
I loved CK2 and bought about half of the DLC for that game and bought CK3 on the first day of release. I figured the new game would be vanilla but it's 4 years later and the game still doesn't have half the content of its predecessor even if you spend the extra $100 to buy all the DLC. It's clear they are purposely holding back content to string out their revenue stream but I refuse to spend another dollar until they give us the game we deserve.
@@njebei It’s got just as much, if not more content, than CK2. Also not as much DLC but the DLC is more expensive if you don’t buy the pass in advance.
I have 2,000+ hours in each game, trust me bro CK3 has surpassed its predecessor the moment they throw in secret societies
Then they should sell all their DLC for 99 cents.
@@ray101mond some of them are not worth that much. Rather be a patch note WITH worth paying dlc
Am i the only one who finds it crazy to see these companies think "i hate my unfinished games release reputation"
And then you look at all that DLC out there they never compiled into a definitive edition and think "you have a way to solve that if you really want to, bitching about it says you are making no effort to resolve it.
paradox has paritally done that with HOI4 and dude jsut wait ofr the sales
@@Revkor I said nothing about PRICE, I am talking about "DEFINITIVE Editions", physical or downloadable copies of feature complete games with all DLC included, no download required, no day 1 patch, nothing but plug and play, when your development cycle fully concludes and last DLC releases. They used to be called GotY editions
Essentially that kind of release just makes the original release date the alpha release, and that psychological sales model is the only reason companies never do this, because it would be admitting telling customers to pay extra for Alpha/Beta releases is stupid, we would rather have the full fixed version, and they get more money parsing it out broken, which is the accusation they are claiming is supposedly false and that they WANT to be perceived NOT to be doing.
It's like a coke addict telling you they don't like being called a coke addict while doing lines or buying a dime bag in front of the rehab clinic.
Google "Download all DLC free" and thank me later
@@michaellane5381 That is exactly why if I dont buy in the first years i probably never will buy their games, got pretty much in cities skylines and was enough. Like CK2 still doesn´t have a complete edition? Why?
And why not at least make like season packs from year to year and make them cheaper because they are several years old, and those "packs" that they sell are horrendous tbh.
I have a feeling that EU5, still known as Project Caesar, will either be their saving grace or another nail in the coffin, though not the final one.
Looking at CK3 i wouldn't hold out much hope.
its prolly gonna suck for like 5-6 years till they release dlc that adds core game mechanics that were in previous games to it.
@@wayne9508 And V3 is even worse than CK3. They are doing less and less with each release, obviously fully expecting to fix it up with several years of high price DLC.
paradox failed as a company when they started dlc-baiting. they’re in a vulnerable position, and as soon as another company decides to make decent grand strategy games, paradox is going to feel it.
Yet that was the time their player base expanded from a niche, cult following into the mainstream with HOI4 and CK2. The hilarious meme generators.
This is funny considering that years ago, I was permabanned from Paradox forums for posting a negative review for one of HoI4s early DLCs - which has resulted in me no longer buying any PI games.
Oh my god, a video we've been unfortunately waiting for... because, we have to talk about this. Thanks btw
And I say it again, it showed way earlier how incompetent paradox is. The disaster of SWORD OF THE STARS 2, is my personal awakening.
For a second I thought you meant there was a sots: the pit 2, and I had no idea that existed. Then I realized you meant the OG series and I looked it up. Then I saw there was in fact a sots: the pit 2 in early access.
Their DLC business model encourages them to release unfinished games. They need to change the business model.
I am a gamer who's trust was killed. I waited and waited and waited for Vic3. I played Vic2 for hundreds of hours. I formed super Germany twice. I played Communist America. I did Democratic China. I conquered all of Africa with Britain. I cannot tell you how much I was waiting for a modern version. Then we get a game that has almost nothing in common with the previous game and gameplay no body wanted. After Cities 2 dropped I was done. I refuse to get another game until I see them drop a working, faithful release. All their games have rabid fans that like the specific gameplay each game provides. All of sudden they said who cares what style you like we are making them how our engineers can make it. Absolutely gutted over the years.
What about Victoria3? Where is the part of text in which you are dissapointed with it? Like Really it feels like there is part of text missing xD
@@Sanvone I'm still so upset I can barely put a thought together. Lol.
@@Sanvone They did say their problem with Victoria 3: It was too different from Victoria 2 quote 'Then we get a game that has almost nothing in common with the previous game and gameplay nobody wanted.'
Paradox chose to switch things up with Victoria 3 and take the risk that their new approach might get more people interested in the Victoria IP. Many of their existing Fans didn't like the change. Pretty simple
@@lucyla9947 the course change is exactly what got me. Every game has a flavour like ice cream. Some people hate Vic but love HoI or EU. I like them all for their own unique focus. CK is historic sims. Vic is economic and diplomatic. EU is trade, the politics of hegemony and colonialism. HoI is war and logistics. Each has its own flow and they totally shat on that in recent years except CK3. In that case they made it even more sims which actually worked and everyone wanted. *Hint* *hint*.
Anyone else had a shiver down their back when he used the word AGILE? and yeah, I know he probably meant agile and not agile software development.
Hehe... Yeah I think he used "agile" in the sense of "this doesn't seem to work let's pivot quickly". Like the adage that "a supertanker cannot do a U-turn easily". When headcount went beyond a certain threshold the momentum becomes too great to do significant pivoting.
I don't think agile software development is inherently bad.
Now, are there people applying it badly, or doing bad things with it and justifying it with "agile"? Sure.
@@lightworker2956 agile isn't bad in theory, the question is: have you EVER seen that theory not badly applied?
@AlucardNoir like with every other theory: if it never works in practice then it is a bad theory.
Clearly it does not function in the software development world of large companies.
@@AlucardNoir Of course, it's quite often seen with the small, agile companies that produce something cool... and then sell it to a corporation.
However, it's not really about the theory being hard to put into practice. The people pitching anything to corporations don't care about what they're selling, they just care about the money. The corporations aren't really looking to improve anything - they just slap the magic codeword and continue doing the same thing (maybe with adding extra daily meetings, because that's easy to do for the management, and doesn't require them to actually do anything). Agile _started_ with huge projects (that was the point, after all - have better ways of actually producing a viable, complicated product); but it's a lot easier to adopt the buzzword than to adopt the practice.
Corporations are paperclip maximisers. You can't expect them to do anything right, or even make a fair attempt at doing something right. All the incentive structures are aligned with making the _appearance_ , but actually doing things right? Not on the menu. They also attract exactly that kind of person into management, and build up entire industries around them. The vast majority of software consultancy, agile or otherwise, is built around selling a product to corporate management; it's all about appearances and pointless conferences (let's not forget what "conference" _actually means_ - an _exchange_ of ideas, that's why people are supposed to come together. You don't need a "conference" to have a guy talk for an hour on a stage), certifications and all that.
Heck, agile is kind of anti-corporate. It ultimately represents focusing very hard on what the customer actually needs, and doing exactly that. That's about 180° from your typical corporate software (and especially the way the sales and management work). The last thing a corporation wants is to satisfy a customer with a small, well developed project that ends (and with the customer satisfied at that). Or to aggressively prune the things that _don't_ work, or the people who _aren't_ contributing. None of this is what your typical corporate manager has any incentive in doing.
At some point they'll understand that actions matter a lot more than words...or they won't
Strategy games are a niche, and the audience that consumes them is more discerning and I always assumed Paradox was different explicitly because they couldn't afford to be your typical big publisher, turns out they had to learn that the hard-way over the last few years.
Oh, they absolutely Were different... back when that was true.
Then they became publicly traded and it followed the usual pattern when that happens.
The fact is "proper" game dev gets done by, like, 8 people with a vision.
Everyone else is bloat.
This has been shown time and time again.
🫠
Cities Skylines 2 was the biggest disappointment for me. The original is such a gem, and they ruined all that for the sake of a quick buck
The slide of Paradox started in 2016, when they went public.
I remember it well because it happened to be right around the release of HoI4 and that's when I went from being a die-hard fan of Paradox to not spending any more money on their products. Because that's when they started releasing half-baked beta builds at full price and included features that should have been in the base game as part of paid expansions.
I won't deal with companies who treat their devoted fanbase as idiots who will keep buying an endless stream of DLCs just to make their game feature complete 4 years down the line.
Even though that's exactly what happened... but some people have more money than sense.
Have to admit, it's nice hearing a studio admit they effed up instead of what seems to be the fad now of just blaming their customers for being 'haters'.
I'm excited to see who gets to keep floating in the next few years with, what I feel, the consumers finally becoming a key influence (with our wallets) on how corps. will continue to practice
My prediction is that we will see the fall and bankruptcy of several old giants (Blizzard, Ubisoft) and Indie Devs will grow to replace them. The future AAA studios are ones we haven't even heard of yet.
It won't happen, because capitalism can't have that. Corporations will never give a fuck about the consumer, because they don't have to. Most people aren't dedicated enough for this shit, and shit like this usually doesn't even work. Boycotts don't work.
Shareholders only care about immediate profit of the current quarter, never the long term goals or reputation. If a companies reputation plummets, they can always sell out.
"The difference between plan and ambition is something that many companies completely mess up".
“I’m in charge and hate that we continue to sell terrible unfinished products I signed off on and it’s hurting our reputation. He are more unfinished products I signed off on though with an increased amount of mtx to make up for our losses.”
the only way they could stop is to actually release the dlc features with the base game and not drip feed them
yes and no , games are complicated , and paradox does make very complicated games , there is reason why even indie games only do "very simple" games who lick lick surface of grand strategy , if it was so easy more people would do it.
but they should put more faith into their fans , maybe less nickle and dime a bit (im aware complex games are hard and they need to make money) but they have niche and fans , lots companies would kill for having people who genuely buy lots games and DLC's , they need to put more quality and take their time rather then pump next big thing
I get your point but I disagree : stellaris is a good example : a space empire simulation with ton of DLC to tweak mechaniccs & add flavor : pick what you want and have fun.
Releasing a game like current Stellaris at launch would be basically impossible to do within budget.
Yep. Greed and laziness are a self-destructive combination.
I have stopped supporting Paradox for the simple fact that they have so much DLC for their games. It is an unreasonable number of DLCs and 99% of the time the DLC is simply content that should be in the base game at release. I refuse to support Paradox.
Ok, from the number of lies and half truths the guy doing the interview told, 100% he is in some form responsible for the company tanking. He also revealed paradox has no idea what it is doing, the success has been an accident or in spite of management, not because of it
They killed Star Trek Infinite for no real reason. Took a great idea, used it for a quick cash grab, then abandoned it as a barely playable game. Had so much potential, we haven't had a good strategy Star Trek IP for over a decade 😢
@@Tonakis_Maximus There is a free Star Trek mod for Stellaris called Star Trek New Horizons available. :)
@@Tonakis_Maximus That game was unfortunately doomed when it looked worse than the Stellaris mod
that game was literally just a bad stellaris mod.
the actual star trek mod for stellaris is way better in every aspect.
Yeah, calling it quits five months after its release is inexcusable for a franchise of this caliber. Granted, there were some things that were outside Paradox's control, like Nimble being liquidated and low player count. The possibility of failure should have been factored into the budget so that even if there is no dlc, the base game should be in a playable state. Currently, it is not the broken Federation mission tree comes to mind.
I'm just waiting for Star Trek Armada for Sins 2 at this point.
Stop letting shareholders dictate your schedule, processes, and budgets. If they want their returns; they should sit back, shut the fuck up, and let the people who know what they are doing do what they need to. These shareholders being so wishy washy over every little thing, the volatility of the stock market and their precious shares is ruining the gaming industry.
Forcing a company to release a game before its ready just to meet quarterly deadlines or appease the shareholders is ONLY good for the shareholders - look at how Bobby Kotick steered Blizzard; the shareholders were happy but the tanked everything good about the company, and the moment the ship starts sinking - the shareholders already have the lifeboats ready to go - they will abandon ship and leave everyone to fend for themselves.
Blizzard, for example, was a very profitable small company. After Mike made the terrible decision to merge with Activision - a bunch of old rich guys in business suits who don't even play videogames said "That isn't enough money."
Since Blizzards fanbase was pretty filled out with all the people they were realistically going to get on board, as games like WoW, Starcraft and Diablo only caters to specific types of people - they had to figure out how to steal more money from their player base. Abusive and manipulative practices. Hence why Kotick, Zerza and others like him ruined their reputation by abusing their loyal fanbase.
Paradox Entertainment has put themselves into a corner that can never be escaped. They have broken trust in a way that it will never be repaired to where it was before - they can go back to their roots, put out good games and keep to their word; and players will be happy, but they will remember when this wasn't the case. They will forever have to stick to this, with no deviation, because the moment they slip up and revert back to breaking trust - everyone will immediately remember what they did before. Once you've slid down the slope once, every other mistake puts you right back at the bottom regardless of how far up you made it.
Often I think about a Reddit post on the paradox sub I saw years ago. A guy posted a paradox tattoo he got and how hard he got roasted. I remember him defending his decision. Wonder if he has covered it up
Stellaris... loved that game, then they changed it into something unrecognizable... who has time to relearn a game over and over again??
Point of order: Double Eleven were not the original dev of Prison Architect, they were merely the prior dev (and probably not a well regarded one either.) Introversion was the original dev: Double Eleven took over development when PA was sold by Introversion to Paradox.
I bought City Skylines and was run out of it by their montization squeeze. I wasnt happy to find them handling Prison Architect.
The original Devs of PA are super cool guys. The fact they were removed and have been silenced leaves me not thinking this will ever be good.
The devs of PA made out like bandits. They no doubt passed on spaghetti code and an unoptimized lemon.
@@Waggabagaboo I wouldn't be too sure about that. I wouldn't be surprised if it were true, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it was entirely wrong and it was just paradox being incompitent/exploitative corporate muppets again.
Paradox used to have solid good points to go along with, and counterbalance, their flaws. The good points have been growing less and the flaws greater ever since they became publicly traded.
(and no, their DLC policy as of EUIV and CKII was not actually one of those flaws... not until they started abusing the hell out of it such that it no longer served it's initial purpose anymore many years later, anyway).
Personally I do not think that this industry will recover until all these old lords of the industry die off (such as Ubisoft) and new studios and publishers are formed by the disgruntled devs of them. We're seeing it start to happen and it needs to spread
When mods make more and better content than paradox DLC, the question becomes what the fuck am I even paying you for? Thank you for giving us a bare-bones structure, modders will fix it into a game for you.
It's a shame nobody is talking about how "Empire of Sin."
Not just an apt title for Paradox, but they're still selling a season 2 DLC for $30 from 4 years ago on a game that never received a bug fix that makes season 1 playable. Nobody has received word, a refund, or even an apology.
I'm sad that this comment will likely be lost too. Anyone interested in a class action lawsuit to get our money back?
I also made a comment about it. Thank you
@LeoMajor1 Hopefully more see and talk about it. Thanks for sharing!
That's illegal in the EU.
1:28 I'm confused - how do those numbers show a total concurrent player count less than the earlier numbers? 6,527 + 5,484 is 12,011, which is higher than the 24-hour peak of 11,725. Sure, it's lower than the all-time peaks, but Skylines 2 is a year old at this point, so we'd expect a drop-off, right?
@@Sayrden the context was that the combination are lower than the numbers from years ago. So likely comparing to the all time peak, yes.
HBS also did BattleTech, a game that continues to have community and mod support to this day
Meanwhile HBS dropped support way too early for the game.
HBS was forced to drop support **because** of Paradox!
@@adriankoch964 No, actually they just followed their plan: Release the game, release 3 expansions (DLC) and then move on. Battletech is one of the very honest projects where everything worked out as planned with full transparency. As much as I'd like to see a few more expansions for that game, I also applaud to the fact that they stick to their communicated plans. The HBS Battletech game should be the role model for all game projects.
Of course you could question why they only planned 3 DLCs - and the answer simply is: Licensing. The Battletech IP is notoriously hard to license, especially if it includes the 14 "Unseen" mechs (which ARE part of HBS's Battletech). Even Wizards of the Coast, the godfather of all CCGs (Magic: The Gathering), dropped their Battletech licence after a few years and also just 3 expansions. It's just not feasible for most. It's a miracle that Piranha Games can hold on to it for so long. MW:O and Mechwarrior 5 seem to be gold mines.
It's just too bad BattleTech while being a good game... is garbage in comparison to similar games from 20 years ago. Front Mission 5, a PS2 game from like 2005, had vastly better mechanics, more realistic mech combat, and more depth than BattleTech. It's actually comical.
@@Cramblit BS
They're just gonna try and build goodwill back up for the next cycle of trading it in for cash.
If they think they can do the business equivalent of a builder-spender rotation they have another thing coming. People don't take well to being jerked around.
PDX is greedier than even EA or Ubislop, have been for years. They have the single worst DLC policy in the entire industry, maybe Sims can rival it.
Paradox knows its reputation has been bad for years. I remember in 2018 when the community was starting to get up in arms with the amount of DLC that Crusader king 2 and Europa universal 4 had. Paradox knows it’s DLC policy and its games are bad. They know that it’s not a good thing if your player base has to have a tearless of what DLC’s to buy to enjoy. they know it’s bad when they have to release a subscription model just because they have too many DLC. They know it’s bad when it’s rare for them to have two good DLC’s back to back. They know their games are bad when they have to go so frequently on sale to get anyone to buy them. The most controversial thing I’ll say is this paradox, actively tries to make ties with its community in order to make sure that they are loyal to them. They know that if you feel like you have a connection to the community and into the company that you’re going to buy their DLC and games our question. Think of how many people know the developers names. that’s weird in any other community. Paradox knows the statement of sunken fallacy truly applies to their company and fan base.
My time with Paradox goes way back to EU1, I believe it was their first game around 2000. Probably because there is no genuine competition for the historical games they do, they have always attracted many passionate, uncritical fanboys! I think i first heard the term "fanboy" on Paradox forums, as someone was denying some bug existed. There was this argument that basically repeated many times for every game over the years (well, decades and probably still goes on). Variations on a theme of:
Gamer1: "XYX feature doesn't seem to work properly, it makes no sense"
FB1: "It's working perfectly, you just don't understand it". FB2: "You dont understand history, the game is right and you are wrong". FB3 "I don't see any problem"
Gamer 1: "No. Here's some examples that just don't make no sense."
FB4: "You're just a hater making things up." FB5: "Well if you don't like it, write your own history game".
PDX Developer/Tester: "Actually, we just looked into it and there is a bug. We fixed it for the next patch".
FB1: "That's whats so great about Paradox. What other company still improves their games months after release?"
FB2, FB3: "hear, hear, all praise the Paradox. The next version will be the greatest game ever".
later...
Gamer 2: "That latest release...ANOther numbers don;t seem to add up correctly.."
FB1: "Yes they do, get out of here you hater.."
....
Well Paradox should start by apologizing to Mariina and CO in general for forcing them to release CS2 in the state it was in. Because Mariina DID say that the game wasn't finished, but Paradox forced their hand into releasing it, and now look what's happened. DO NOT believe what he said about 'oh both CO and Paradox were in agreement to release it', because that's garbage and just damage control to cover his own backside. This happens all the time and not JUST Paradox. Publishers force developers to push out games that aren't ready all the time, and then cop the backlash afterwards. Remember, developers don't have the final say in games. Publishers do.
Both parties are responsible for the mess that is Cities Skylines 2. Paradox for financing an incompetent studio even after granting them a two year extension from when the game was originally supposed to release in 2021. Colossal Order for being an incompetent studio with poor leadership that can't fulfill deadlines and rely on modders to fix the work that they themselves aren't able to complete.
Not sure what the percentages are for what games generate the most revenue for Paradox but I would venture a guess and say that the Cities Skylines franchise is probably at the top of the list. Because of CO failing to deliver what was promised and releasing the game early it forced Paradox to cut funding on other projects just to keep CO on life support. Life by You is now Death by Paradox because Paradox is being a lot more frugal and a lot more cautious as to what projects they are willing to fund. The days of milking Cities Skylines 1 are over and both Paradox and CO are struggling to stay funded and it is hurting everybody, especially the other devs and studios that get nowhere near the same level of funding that the Cities franchise gets.
@@thephantomchannel5368 Paradox might have given CO a 2 year extension, but if you know anything about game development, is that things CAN and DO happen in that period of time that leads to delays. Whether temporary or indefinite. Nothing goes according to plan. And like I said, at the end of the day it's not developers that make the final call for games. It's publishers. You can debate it all you like. Kind of going of topic here, but look at CD Projekt Red. They basically TOLD the publishers that the game wasn't ready with Cyberpunk 2077, and yet the 'publishers' forced the developers to push that game out the door. And it lead to the same disaster with the publishers being called out for it in a subsequent conference call. Yeah okay Paradox might have SAID that they and CO came to an agreement to release the game and not delay it, but how do we know that's REALLY true? Like I said, Paradox might have only said that for damage control reasons to protect their reputation.
What happened was a simple trade. They traded player goodwill for money. It was quite clear what happened after lamplighters league that they were in deep shit and pushed unfinished crap out to patch the holes, yet they refuse to talk about it. It might've been as bad as "push it or we're done" and hoped to fix it in the long run, but that was as usual very short sighted.
If this channel is owned by Paradox, you need to pay the dlc to watch the rest.
All these publishers keep hurting and victimizing you guys. I’m so sorry. You’re all so brave
Their owning up will come in 20 dlc packages all priced at $30 each.
After Cities 1 added that shady and unnecessary "launcher", I remember changing my steam review from positive to negative, ending my review with something like: "good will is hard to earn and easy to lose." Since then they have worked so hard at the easy part, rebuilding that good will might as well be impossible.
Maybe Paradox should avoid releasing a plethora of nonsense DLC at ridiculous prices.
I feel like these devs worked hard on these projects but ran into issues with project management- marketing, team size, productivity, leadership etc. Problems that they hoped a publisher could solve. Instead the publisher pushed for project control, fitting the game into the company model, questioning features, questioning the game's direction, the game's place in the market. And their solution was to delays, layoffs, more money onto the project, taking studios off the project. That is just bad abusive relationship between the developer and the publisher. The developer is struggling on a project they have no support on and the publisher just mounts preasure.
Yeah, like they said, we'll see in 2026. Paradox games are my most played games, and I want that to continue.
That was one of your better videos. I prefer this less formal version of you.
The Sim City IP simply laid there dead and buried, and paradox capitalized on it and released Cities Skylines to great acclaim.
EA, watching CS receiving stellar praise and a large cut of a pie they haven't tasted for years finally spat out a new 'Sim City' worse than the original CS.
Then how Paradox managed to fumble the ball for CS2 like they did is simply mind boggling. Inexcusable in all honesty, and the one in charge should've been fired for that blunder.
Multimilion to billion-level potential franchise flushed down the toilet.
Except that EA released SimCity in 2013 and Cities: Skylines was released in 2015.
@@ulycination978I was about to say what crack is he smoking for 2015 to come before 2013 😂😂😂
@@ulycination978
SimCity was an acclaimed brand - that EA fried by forcing always online, on servers that barely stayed online...
...this allowed Skylines to take over the city-building market.
Paradox has now taken the Skylines IP out back and ended it with a slug of lead...
...poised for a massive take-over, is "workers &resources: soviet republic".
I wouldn't at all be surprised if Paradox will have lost their golden goose, forever, just like EA lost one of theirs.
@@TheTotallyRealXiJinping They said that SimCity came first, but EA failed to Capitalize on it, so Paradox made Cities Skylines to grab that market. Cities Skylines then became the main hitter in the genre. Because of that EA tried to revive SimCity, fumbled the ball, which should've set up Paradox great for Cities Skylines 2 if it released in good state, but Paradox then also fumbled CS2.
wrong way around. EA released SC first and it was such a massive failure that CO with their history in transport sims decided to take a crack. There are some references to simcity in CS (the most obvious being the very limited size of the starting plot in CS).
Only game I played from them was Across the Obelisk. Niche game, quite fun, enjoyed myself with my friends.
Quit as soon as they dropped DLC and the game into a separate ad-filled launcher. Smelled like greed, it was greed, and greed doesn't constitute good-natured or humble origins. That's it. That's my reason for quitting any of their products. Nothing personal, it's just business.
This just feels like they are internally blind to their own actual problems. Dozens of overpriced and underwhelming DLCs that make getting into their games break the bank. I watched them in real time tank Across the Obelisk. I've given up on ever actually playing Stellaris because the content I want is spread thinly across 50 DLCs. Their games don't just flop because they are buggy or unpolished, though that certainly doesn't help. They flop because every single person knows that if Paradox is associated with it, its going to be a DLC nightmare. They will shave off as much content as they can so they can sell it to you later. Thats their reputation. They clearly have no intention of changing.
dude they acknowleged the price issue after trials of allegence and if the proice bugs you WAIT FOR A FUCKIGN SALE. there is one every year my god
@@Revkor "They acknowledged they are scamming you, just wait for the scam to be discounted and then the scam is somehow magically gone!"
@@bewawolf19 no. what do you think Black friday sales are? A SALE! just be paitent and wait if you are budgeted
@@Revkor Or you know, don't release arguably base game content spread across 50 DLCs that you have to individually pay for. Surprise surprise sale or no it just isn't worth the hassle to most people even if they have the money.
@@principalityofbelka6201 then that's a YOU problem then a them problem. maybe some of these ideas didn't come to them back when they made the game...or maybe the result of FEEDBACK fr4om players.
stop acting like a brat and be sensible. most games years ago don't get such long term support.
I would say that we should never expect Paradox to be involved with the launch of any good or great video games ever again. Paradox is a publicly traded corporation, and so is interested exclusively in the increase of their stock price to benefit investors - video games are just the tool they use to extract money from gamers for the benefit of shareholders. I would wager that this event with no game releases is the product of some PR firm they hired to wash their terrible reputation in hopes of getting the company listed on a larger stock exchange. I would exercise extreme caution before purchasing anything this company touches.
make game ... have 500 DLC's at really over priced prices ... milk the fans and suck them dry
how is 20-30€ overpriced for an expansion?
I get complaining about quality of their new games and stuff like that but overpriced dlc? really? I feel like they are one of the few devs still selling dlcs at the pricing of the early era of gaming
@@tbrreversed6711 Did you see CS2 first DLC. It wasn't overpriced for what you got.
@@tbrreversed6711 Add them all up, bud. Also, they're charging full game prices for what amount to a few skins and literal mods.
@@tbrreversed6711 The early Expansion DLCs for CKII and EUIV were absolutely worth it. The model worked.
Then some time later (right around the time they became publicly traded, to no one's supprise) they stopped actually using it as intended and started abusing it. Lower quality DLC, more stinkers, prices less in line with what you got, new games that weren't designed in a way that was actually compatible with the DLC policy so in practice you ended up back in the position of haing to pay for things you neither wanted nor needed in order to get what you were there for (and That being underwhelming, and the whole lot being over priced for what you got out of it (though not for the time, money, and effort it took to Make, again, see how the game was not designed to be compatible with the system) even if you Did want everything in it)...
It spiraled, badly. Stellaris showed signs of the issue, HOI4 was where it got bad, EUIV DLCs degraded so badly that last I checked on of them was the lowest rated item on steam Of All Time (I don't think anything's managed to beat that? Worst rated Game of all time changes hands from time to time, I think that DLC still has worst rated Item locked in though)
And that's ignoring their other failures and missteps.
@@BloodwyrmWildheart Guess Im just too oldschool of liking my games getting more content added over time, outside of just mods. What I dont like is when the content they add is half baked which has happened many times. But then again none of that has to do with the pricing which was the only thing I commented on
Meh I am not buying it. Paradox is still in full denial even as their sales are collapsing. A few months ago, I had a few arguments with PDX senior devs on the forums. When arguing they need to stop with their insane DLC model, they were in denial and end with stupid arguments like "sales are saying otherwise". The reality is they will see the company full collapse and go bankrupt before admitting they went too far with their scamy model of releasing indefinitely DLCs with base game being broken and glorified DLC pipelines.
It is the classic case of corporate suits believing they are in control while they are multiple years late. Because when loyal customers stop buying, they dont come back.
Easy answer to fix Paradox dlc issue: after the dlc has been out for a year, create a package of dlc's that add up to about $50 worth and then all that "Year 1 package", "Year 2 package", and so on for $20-30 with occasional sales on the packages as well. It makes it less intimidating/expensive for new players to get into these long established games then
That idea sounds pretty good. Much better than the current DLC model.
15:50 Bellular, tip for you, their problems crested over COVID, wherein weaknesses in management, oversight, and development may have been exposed. Our grievances with their practices predate that by a considerable time. Stellaris has been a train-wreck that never quite reaches its resting point. Horror-show. So that excuse doesn't wash. Thank you for the attention to this.
Paradox wasn't getting another dime from me after they sidelined BATTLETECH to try and make some cheap mech knockoff "Mechabella" or whatever.
Those scumlords even tried to capitalize on Battletech's popularity and posted an ad for "Mechadelirium" on Battletech's steam updates section in your game library.
Hopefully HBS reaches out to Microsoft to get greenlit for another game in the Battletech universe.
Really disappointed you didn't touch on Battletech in the video, but I get it, BT universe is pretty niche.
Many years ago, I freelanced for a magazine with a very niche audience. Its focus was not games, but it's SO niche I don't want to say its name. One of the main things I did for them was media reviews. I was as honest as I could be in those reviews, and I guess it worked out well for everyone, because I did it for years. Well, during my time with that magazine Paradox was putting out some games that fit into that niche. So they reached out to the magazine to ask if we wanted to do reviews of those games. The EIC sent out a mass email asking who wanted to participate.
I was stoked. I had been a Paradox fan for some time by then, so I immediately contacted the EIC and asked to be one of those reviewers.
I got turned down flat - turns out they'd seen my media reviews and weren't thrilled. This was a good many years before GG, but after my experience with that magazine, I wasn't too surprised at the ostensible aim of the pro-GG people. Sad how Paradox has turned out since then.
If I have to define Paradox today, is...aimless in the worse sense possible. They are doing any kind of game that exist, shipping it way too early and seemingly by what you say not even realizing it is too early, pointing out the massive inexperience in the fields they are touching.
But that's the problem: fields. They are literally trying to do everything for the sake of "impressing" someone (probably the investors) and by result nothing gets right, even their usual hits have done poorly and the most damning thing is that MODS are actually good and the mods are frustrated with the actual updates changing stuff that no one cares (see Stellaris) while failing to see what people desperately ask (see HOI4).
The fact they realized " we overextended in stuff we have no investment in " is good, but the fact they speak of those products as " touch and go " it's worrying to me that this is just talk without facts, that they are gonna just shill out more aimless game and say " oh but we are not investing in this so it's bad who cares. " while still not refocusing on making their Grand Strategy good.
As somebody stung by Skylines II, Victoria 3 and recent DLCs I think this is a little bit reassuring to hear. Yes it's what we want to hear and actions must follow but if I look around at other publishers and dev companies I don't see many putting up their hands and owning their f*ck ups. Well done Paradox, you at least have won back my attention for now.
I wish Bloodlines 2 died. What The Chinese Room is making is not a VTMB game at all, in many ways it is the opposite.
"Gosh I just hate our reputation for putting out unfinished games. I wonder how we can fix that?" Gee... what on earth can they do? 😂
Victoria 3 sadly kind of underwhelming :/
*I have no trust left for Paradox. They have done too many anti consumer things and treated dev's they 'own' very badly.*
They murdered Sword of the Stars way back when for Stellaris, my gut and history shows me this is true.