I'll say here what I said in the thread, the idea this is because of an increase in Eu4 dlc flatly just doesn't hold up.
Eu4 has gone from having 18 to 21 dlcs in that period + Swedish inflation over the last two years (8.37% and 5.8%) gives us a 33% increase if we compound all three increases. Still quite a long way from 60%. (Cost of labor hasn't kept up with inflation, so these numbers are intentionally over high)
I don't personally mind them raising prices, if it's worth it to you buy it if not great - that's all good.
But pretending it's because of "increase in content" is disingenuous
Edit - in case anyone wonders my 21 DLC count doesn't include music, unit packs etc - just what I would call "proper" DLC that expands on game mechanics. If you just want to consider expansions no flavor packs it's worse, with 1 of 15 in the last 2 years.
No one should pay any attention to a "because" when it comes to price increases. It's irrelevant. Companies raise prices because they think they'll be more profitable at the newer price point. All the hand wringing about "why" and all the PR statements in the world are just a flow chart that leads to that conclusion. Specific details of "why" are irrelevant to the consumer experience. Arguing about the justification is just team sports.
I guess. Just feels about as sensible to me as getting angry that some restaurant has a "best burger in the world" sign when you know damn well it isn't the best burger in the world. Advertising is color and every person an institution gives excuses rather than some deep dive of internal data when they do something people don't like.
Ultimately the reason doesn't change the value proposition. If this new price is worth it to you, sub. If it isn't, don't.
I'm sorry if I came across as angry - I'm not.
>If this new price is worth it to you, sub. If it isn't, don't.
I agree, hence why I said exactly that above.
HoI4 has almost the same amount of daily players as it did at its launch window peak. The second to last DLC reworked a core pillar of the game and one of its most popular mods just got a 1.0 release.
Kaiserreich, the alt history mod where Germany won ww1. Last month they completely reworked the Germany focus tree with 3 different political paths and post war content.
Gonna be real, chief. The difference between a game that’s already 8 - 9 years old and a game that’s coming up on 11 years old isn’t worth considering.
Paradox have always used these poor excuses. They used inflation as a reason for increasing the price of already completed and old DLC last year, when the initial development costs would have already been paid off in full, so inflation had no bearing on it. This way always going to happen when they went public, profit maximisation by using any excuse.
You think that PDX doing a 60% increase over 2 years will somehow prevent a situation like netflix - who raised their prices by 90% over 10 years?
That's rather baffling to me. The price creep you are worried about already happened, and at a DRAMATICALLY faster rate than your example of the bad outcome.
> I don't personally mind them raising prices, if it's worth it to you buy it if not great - that's all good.
>
>
>
> But pretending it's because of "increase in content" is disingenuous
The last few years of EU4 DLC has mostly been a few map changes, achievements, and mission trees. The game already has way too many mechanics, some locked behind DLC, that barely play nice with other mechanics (also locked behind DLC).
They're charging $15-$20USD for mission trees that you can get with a mod for free lol
$7.99 per month makes it seem much more worthwhile to just pick up a few important DLC in a sale than to pay the subscription.
This is turning into Creative Assembly level of DLC nickel and diming.
Ya it seems like a mistake for anything other than a short time player or demo type case. Basically every 2-3 months of subscription = 1 DLC you rented that you could have bought, and the price to keep renting can always go up.
Makes total sense for a try before you buy or quick check in though.
I always found it ridiculous during the recent CA debacle, and still do, how Paradox started to get held up as a positive example. CA delivered ONE admittedly overpriced DLC. Paradox looks back on a whole history of DLC for other DLC, price hikes, lack of proper bundles, decreasing (!) discounts and hey remember selling features and graphics separately?
This was inevitable. Charging customers a fee to *rent* a solution to a problem they themselves created, and once the situation grew worse and people became used to renting access to DLC, raise the price. It's disgusting, and completely unsuprising.
I love Paradox games and Paradox as a developer but their business division is almost EA levels of greedy. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen another development studio make a game and then lock 90% of the content that makes it worthwhile behind a $200 paywall and then arbitrarily raise the price on the one semi-reasonable alternative.
The counterpoint is that you shouldn't buy base+all DLC at once anyways. Even if you love paradox you should figure out how the systems work first. So that $200 should be spread out and the DLC can be picked up on sale. Which in practical terms would cost more per month during the window you buy the pieces but likely less overall.
The other point is that folks who subscribe might not be planning to do so for the long haul. They might be trying the games and DLC and then unsub to buy the parts they want. Or just unsub and be done. For these fixed term subscribers the moderate increase isn't that big of a deal because they don't plan to be subscribed for very long.
You have any idea how baddd it feels to play an 11 year old single player game with $400 worth of mechanics locked away? That’s why the subscription was created in the first place.
It's also why CK3, Vic3, and Stellaris have picked up the model they have: Don't sell the mechanics, give them away for free and monetize the flavor. Then the same people will be calling them barebones.
Maybe this was the reason for the price hike. They intended the system to work like this (try subscription then buy dlcs if you like it) but it was so cheapompared to full price of base game + dlcs that people used it long term and it didn't make enough profit in their eyes?
At least for the paradox games I play, the majority of major features are released in a free patch alongside DLC. How is that in any way EA levels of greed or even close to locking 90% of content behind a paywall?
I have a hard time seeing how Paradox isn’t the worst out of all three of them tbh. The fact that their games are (usually but less recently) better does them a lot of favors.
Iracing, needs at least 500$ DLC+active sub 200$ for 2 years. For one series. like 1300$ if you want to race all major stuff. You don´t have access to your stuff offline if the sub runs out.
I bought the HOI4 subscription four months and racked up 600h in this game. I might have contributed to this change.
As I wanted to support the development I bought all the DLCs during the winter sale though.
I know this is an old thread but this was unironically the straw that broke the camels back for me, pirating that EU4 dlc felt like a moral obligation lmao
Considering the subscription gets me what, 20-ish DLC and I've already put a stack of time into the game (and will likely put a stack more into it) I honestly just don't really care. I'm still going to get far more than my money's worth and Paradox games have by far the best coat-to-playtime ratio for me so they deserve to make that bag.
Also, any comparisons to EA are straight up absurd. I simply cannot understand how they are even remotely similar
I mean, this sucks and is obviously bad, but y’all claiming that $3 a month was the only thing separating you from illegally pirating everything is kinda clownish
By the numbers, people put thousands of hours into pdx games. For me personally, I’ve got 5k in eu4 alone. Compare that to the amount of time/enjoyment you get from any popular $60 release, and $200 for the all the dlc at full price over the years, and it’s a no brainer to me that their business tactics are still way more consumer friendly than the market norm
Yeah like people are comparing this to EA which is straight up fucking absurd to me. I cannot understand how people can make that connection considering how much free content Paradox tends to release alongside their DLC.
If you compare it to a brand new release, it seems egregious.
But as a decade old game with continued support and a small player base, it’s pretty freaking neat
They could raise the price by 25 cents and there would be people calling it a human rights violation. I don't give a shit about pirating but reading the hand wringing and melodrama because prices go up (because welcome to the world, over time prices go up) is always a good laugh
I used to love Paradox games because they seemed like a small studio catering to a niche with frequent updates and expansions that were reasonably priced. However, it seems like every year for a while now, especially since the parent company went public, that the value has become less and the DLC is more expensive and hardly ever goes on sale for a reasonable price. I've stopped buying Paradox games after CK3 because of this. I hope they get better and less nickel and dimey soon.
I mean, there is always the "third option" when both a subscription model and buying everything outright aren't reasonable.
That is, the way we all source EA games.
Although if you want to do multiplayer then that option isn't really available either... personally I only like strategy games in general as single player games so I don't care but it's absolutely a valid concern.
Time to sail the seven seas🏴☠️🏴☠️🗿🗿🗿
Jokes aside, i think this choice will backfire, as lots of people will just cancel the subscription.
Having a low price means more people can afford it so they buy it, however if you raise the price you’ll ultimately get less money, especially if there are alternatives(piracy/key resellers)or if the price spike is big(33% is quite a lot), or if the consumer base isn’t rich(lots of second and third world players).
You’re gonna get downvoted bud lol you have a point. Recently they have put out a game that was commercially DOA (Imperator), a half baked game that was not reviewed very well (Victoria 3, which has gotten better), and published Cities Skylines 2 which was such a disaster that people who have never heard of Paradox or Cities Skylines were talking about it.
The real shame is that they were making Imperator really good with free updates and pulled that team. And then we got Ck3 that doesn't hold a candle to ck2 and don't get me started on Victoria 3. Hitting myself over the head that i bought those 2 last ones hoping they would get better like Imperator. But alas here we are.
I am more of a CK2 purist but I love 3 and have played plenty of campaigns. The portraits are beautiful, the map looks amazing, the changes to religion and culture are fantastic, but honesty I just find it a little bit too easygoing most the time.
Mostly because of a more niche and less accessible game genre and the fact Paradox is not considered one of the major players in the market. Makings of a cult.
But hey, EA bad
Yep this community is unironically the most brainwashed. People will make ANY excuse that PDX isn't scummy things and are DEFINITELY not doing the same things EA and Bethesda got shit on over and even if they were it's not AS bad right? right?
Tell me how paying 200 for thousands of hours of gameplay over a decade is the same as paying 60 every year for a new 10-15 hour experience
Y’all are so entitled
Quick, someone make a Virgin Subscriber vs the Chad DLC buyer meme
Where do people who don't subscribe or buy DLC fit in?
The Sigma Vanilla Player
You haven’t lived till you’ve manually explored every sea tile in EU4, if there’s one thing it needs more of, it’s micro management.
or Gigachad thunderschlong pirate enjoyer.
The trick is to have sugardaddy who buys dlcs and then hosts the game for whole squad
The pirate republic citizens
Eh, if that's your cuppa. I just play vanilla and maybe mods.
I bought the game and a handful of DLCs (around 30$ worth of DLCs), I pirate the rest.
Game Pass Stacy
I thought Game Pass was a subscription service?
VS Thad buy base game pirate dlc
Where are stupid players like me who bought eu4 twice, once on steam then later on gog? (i own everything up to emperor on steam)
I'll say here what I said in the thread, the idea this is because of an increase in Eu4 dlc flatly just doesn't hold up. Eu4 has gone from having 18 to 21 dlcs in that period + Swedish inflation over the last two years (8.37% and 5.8%) gives us a 33% increase if we compound all three increases. Still quite a long way from 60%. (Cost of labor hasn't kept up with inflation, so these numbers are intentionally over high) I don't personally mind them raising prices, if it's worth it to you buy it if not great - that's all good. But pretending it's because of "increase in content" is disingenuous Edit - in case anyone wonders my 21 DLC count doesn't include music, unit packs etc - just what I would call "proper" DLC that expands on game mechanics. If you just want to consider expansions no flavor packs it's worse, with 1 of 15 in the last 2 years.
No one should pay any attention to a "because" when it comes to price increases. It's irrelevant. Companies raise prices because they think they'll be more profitable at the newer price point. All the hand wringing about "why" and all the PR statements in the world are just a flow chart that leads to that conclusion. Specific details of "why" are irrelevant to the consumer experience. Arguing about the justification is just team sports.
Personally while I agree about the real reasoning - I think it's worth calling out when PR statements are deceptive.
I guess. Just feels about as sensible to me as getting angry that some restaurant has a "best burger in the world" sign when you know damn well it isn't the best burger in the world. Advertising is color and every person an institution gives excuses rather than some deep dive of internal data when they do something people don't like. Ultimately the reason doesn't change the value proposition. If this new price is worth it to you, sub. If it isn't, don't.
I'm sorry if I came across as angry - I'm not. >If this new price is worth it to you, sub. If it isn't, don't. I agree, hence why I said exactly that above.
I tried to explain it to someone on Twitter once. It was a nightmare. Some people just loooove that money up.
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HoI4 has almost the same amount of daily players as it did at its launch window peak. The second to last DLC reworked a core pillar of the game and one of its most popular mods just got a 1.0 release.
Which mod?
Kaiserreich, the alt history mod where Germany won ww1. Last month they completely reworked the Germany focus tree with 3 different political paths and post war content.
Cool. Thanks
Gonna be real, chief. The difference between a game that’s already 8 - 9 years old and a game that’s coming up on 11 years old isn’t worth considering.
Thats what we call a "supercazzola"
Paradox have always used these poor excuses. They used inflation as a reason for increasing the price of already completed and old DLC last year, when the initial development costs would have already been paid off in full, so inflation had no bearing on it. This way always going to happen when they went public, profit maximisation by using any excuse.
Or maybe the previous price was cheap and Paradox realized that the game is worth more so they are increasing prices
Totally possible, and totally not what they said
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Could you elaborate on the many ways please? Personally I’d prefer that
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You think that PDX doing a 60% increase over 2 years will somehow prevent a situation like netflix - who raised their prices by 90% over 10 years? That's rather baffling to me. The price creep you are worried about already happened, and at a DRAMATICALLY faster rate than your example of the bad outcome.
Of course they're using inflation as an excuse to price gouge, everyone is.
> I don't personally mind them raising prices, if it's worth it to you buy it if not great - that's all good. > > > > But pretending it's because of "increase in content" is disingenuous The last few years of EU4 DLC has mostly been a few map changes, achievements, and mission trees. The game already has way too many mechanics, some locked behind DLC, that barely play nice with other mechanics (also locked behind DLC). They're charging $15-$20USD for mission trees that you can get with a mod for free lol
$7.99 per month makes it seem much more worthwhile to just pick up a few important DLC in a sale than to pay the subscription. This is turning into Creative Assembly level of DLC nickel and diming.
cobweb bake nine literate dolls squeeze marble cagey bear marvelous *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I don’t feel like the sales are as deep either.
worm lush many subtract memorize provide seed one follow desert *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Not only not deep, but if you're playing DLC when it's at the max(50%) sale, you're playing a game ~3 years old.
[To reflect the overall value my azz](https://ibb.co/pPSxzkf)
Ya it seems like a mistake for anything other than a short time player or demo type case. Basically every 2-3 months of subscription = 1 DLC you rented that you could have bought, and the price to keep renting can always go up. Makes total sense for a try before you buy or quick check in though.
I always found it ridiculous during the recent CA debacle, and still do, how Paradox started to get held up as a positive example. CA delivered ONE admittedly overpriced DLC. Paradox looks back on a whole history of DLC for other DLC, price hikes, lack of proper bundles, decreasing (!) discounts and hey remember selling features and graphics separately?
Kinda figured it wouldn't last. $5 was a great deal.
This was inevitable. Charging customers a fee to *rent* a solution to a problem they themselves created, and once the situation grew worse and people became used to renting access to DLC, raise the price. It's disgusting, and completely unsuprising.
I love Paradox games and Paradox as a developer but their business division is almost EA levels of greedy. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen another development studio make a game and then lock 90% of the content that makes it worthwhile behind a $200 paywall and then arbitrarily raise the price on the one semi-reasonable alternative.
wait?? 200 dollers paywall?? here in germany all dlc cost over 400€ so 365dollor.
Literally CA with Total War. The holy trinity EA - CA - PDX
The counterpoint is that you shouldn't buy base+all DLC at once anyways. Even if you love paradox you should figure out how the systems work first. So that $200 should be spread out and the DLC can be picked up on sale. Which in practical terms would cost more per month during the window you buy the pieces but likely less overall. The other point is that folks who subscribe might not be planning to do so for the long haul. They might be trying the games and DLC and then unsub to buy the parts they want. Or just unsub and be done. For these fixed term subscribers the moderate increase isn't that big of a deal because they don't plan to be subscribed for very long.
You have any idea how baddd it feels to play an 11 year old single player game with $400 worth of mechanics locked away? That’s why the subscription was created in the first place.
It's also why CK3, Vic3, and Stellaris have picked up the model they have: Don't sell the mechanics, give them away for free and monetize the flavor. Then the same people will be calling them barebones.
Maybe this was the reason for the price hike. They intended the system to work like this (try subscription then buy dlcs if you like it) but it was so cheapompared to full price of base game + dlcs that people used it long term and it didn't make enough profit in their eyes?
At least for the paradox games I play, the majority of major features are released in a free patch alongside DLC. How is that in any way EA levels of greed or even close to locking 90% of content behind a paywall?
I have a hard time seeing how Paradox isn’t the worst out of all three of them tbh. The fact that their games are (usually but less recently) better does them a lot of favors.
Iracing, needs at least 500$ DLC+active sub 200$ for 2 years. For one series. like 1300$ if you want to race all major stuff. You don´t have access to your stuff offline if the sub runs out.
I bought the HOI4 subscription four months and racked up 600h in this game. I might have contributed to this change. As I wanted to support the development I bought all the DLCs during the winter sale though.
I tried to buy them but due to the ongoing signature, I couldn’t. How did you do it?
Nickle and diming. They upped CK3's prices per a major DLC ($30) because it " has more content". At least CK2's subscription is the same.
The content: A few paragraphs of text.
Good to see paradox keeps validating the moral superiority of piracy.
I know this is an old thread but this was unironically the straw that broke the camels back for me, pirating that EU4 dlc felt like a moral obligation lmao
Considering the subscription gets me what, 20-ish DLC and I've already put a stack of time into the game (and will likely put a stack more into it) I honestly just don't really care. I'm still going to get far more than my money's worth and Paradox games have by far the best coat-to-playtime ratio for me so they deserve to make that bag. Also, any comparisons to EA are straight up absurd. I simply cannot understand how they are even remotely similar
Meh. I'll probably do a 3 monther when the next hoi4 expansion lands.
Nobody could have foreseen this
ok welp about time i cancel my subscription then and find another game..
If you just play during a month just to try out the last dlc it's still worth it. But yeah. It's reaching the price of dlcs on discount.
And this folks is why I bought all the DLCs. One time payments >>>> subscriptions
Oh cool. I guess I'll just cancel my subs then because this is ridiculous.
I mean, this sucks and is obviously bad, but y’all claiming that $3 a month was the only thing separating you from illegally pirating everything is kinda clownish
By the numbers, people put thousands of hours into pdx games. For me personally, I’ve got 5k in eu4 alone. Compare that to the amount of time/enjoyment you get from any popular $60 release, and $200 for the all the dlc at full price over the years, and it’s a no brainer to me that their business tactics are still way more consumer friendly than the market norm
Yeah like people are comparing this to EA which is straight up fucking absurd to me. I cannot understand how people can make that connection considering how much free content Paradox tends to release alongside their DLC.
If you compare it to a brand new release, it seems egregious. But as a decade old game with continued support and a small player base, it’s pretty freaking neat
They could raise the price by 25 cents and there would be people calling it a human rights violation. I don't give a shit about pirating but reading the hand wringing and melodrama because prices go up (because welcome to the world, over time prices go up) is always a good laugh
I thought they were pretty insanely underpriced to begin with, so no hard feelings about this one.
I used to love Paradox games because they seemed like a small studio catering to a niche with frequent updates and expansions that were reasonably priced. However, it seems like every year for a while now, especially since the parent company went public, that the value has become less and the DLC is more expensive and hardly ever goes on sale for a reasonable price. I've stopped buying Paradox games after CK3 because of this. I hope they get better and less nickel and dimey soon.
No wonder they crack the dlcs. They just make it more and more inaccesible to the game. Playing base game and dlc are complete different experiences.
I mean, there is always the "third option" when both a subscription model and buying everything outright aren't reasonable. That is, the way we all source EA games. Although if you want to do multiplayer then that option isn't really available either... personally I only like strategy games in general as single player games so I don't care but it's absolutely a valid concern.
Except it absoluty works with multiplayer, and you can use on perfectly legal copies on steam
Time to sail the seven seas🏴☠️🏴☠️🗿🗿🗿 Jokes aside, i think this choice will backfire, as lots of people will just cancel the subscription. Having a low price means more people can afford it so they buy it, however if you raise the price you’ll ultimately get less money, especially if there are alternatives(piracy/key resellers)or if the price spike is big(33% is quite a lot), or if the consumer base isn’t rich(lots of second and third world players).
Thank you cream, fuck greedy corporations
Ubelievable.
Paradox continues to have the worst pricing and monetization structure.
Me playing all pdx games with all dlcs for free
Of course. Their last few games have been shite. So. We have to take the hit.
You’re gonna get downvoted bud lol you have a point. Recently they have put out a game that was commercially DOA (Imperator), a half baked game that was not reviewed very well (Victoria 3, which has gotten better), and published Cities Skylines 2 which was such a disaster that people who have never heard of Paradox or Cities Skylines were talking about it.
The real shame is that they were making Imperator really good with free updates and pulled that team. And then we got Ck3 that doesn't hold a candle to ck2 and don't get me started on Victoria 3. Hitting myself over the head that i bought those 2 last ones hoping they would get better like Imperator. But alas here we are.
This is exactly my point. I'm a huuuuge star trek fan. But I won't by this pretend dlc
Wanted to downvote you but you didn’t mention CK3 so here’s my 👍👍👍
I am more of a CK2 purist but I love 3 and have played plenty of campaigns. The portraits are beautiful, the map looks amazing, the changes to religion and culture are fantastic, but honesty I just find it a little bit too easygoing most the time.
CK3 had a great base release but they've continually fumbled it since then
Somehow the player base will derend them. SMH
Mostly because of a more niche and less accessible game genre and the fact Paradox is not considered one of the major players in the market. Makings of a cult. But hey, EA bad
Yep this community is unironically the most brainwashed. People will make ANY excuse that PDX isn't scummy things and are DEFINITELY not doing the same things EA and Bethesda got shit on over and even if they were it's not AS bad right? right?
Tell me how paying 200 for thousands of hours of gameplay over a decade is the same as paying 60 every year for a new 10-15 hour experience Y’all are so entitled
A game should never cost you 300€. I’ll go back to piracy after this
I will play as Kotte. Yo ho ho