Paradox Wants Your Money, Not Your Heart

As a longtime fan of Paradox games, I wanted to comment on a culture of defense of the motives of Paradox that I have noted. It is natural to wish to defend the makers of your favorite games, especially when it is a genre without major competitors, as it is with grand strategy. However, and specifically in light of their going public, the purpose of the company is to make money. The current model of Paradox development is not intended to make the best game possible, but rather to make the most money possible. The model only continues to function as long as the consumers of Paradox's games continue to tolerate what is objectively a more exploitative content release model than Anthem or Fallout 76.

Games as a Service

Now I'm sure other gamers on this subreddit are no stranger to the controversies that have surrounded Bethesda, EA, and many others over the last few years. The former two currently exist as some of the most common examples of what has become known as the "Games as a Service" model. This is the idea that a game on release will not have all of the content at launch that the full experience of the game will be at a certain point post-release. Most of these games are either accompanied by, or have released shortly after launch, a roadmap for future content. I would like to use two prominent games that it is considered perfectly acceptable to hate on as an example of two different iterations of the same formula.

Fallout 76 -

Probably the most well known of the recent games as a service, largely because of the backlash of the single player focused community. Fallout 76 shipped, for 60 USD, as a buggy mess. There were dozens of gamebreaking bugs, in addition to thousands of more minor graphical and gameplay bugs. The game had generated concern before launch due to its accelerated development window, despite claiming to be 4 times as large as Fallout 4, and with much improved graphics. The launch only confirmed these worries, as the game shipped effectively unfinished. Quests had little depth or length, many just MMO style fetch quests. A game that advertised its social interactions had always on or off voice chat, without push to talk. The massive world felt empty and barren in a very different way to the eerie wasteland aesthetic the series went for. There are countless other issues with the game, from hackers accessing the dev room and Bethesda being seemingly powerless to stop them, to continued issues with servers, to players being permabanned for crafting items too fast. Bethesda promised to improve the game, and released a roadmap of planned content for the next year. Fans and critics alike skewered the game, and shops are just trying to offload the now worthless copies of the mostly dead game. They agreed that the game was unfinished, had been pushed out early, and was unacceptable to have been released in that manner, whatever development it may see in the future. There has also been recent controversy about selling item repair kits in the game's atom shop. Equipment repair is a core game mechanic, and while these kits can be obtained as quest rewards as well, players can now pay to ignore a game mechanic that was troublesome. Of course I am not saying Paradox is guilty of microtransactions; Paradox wouldn't have cosmetic microtransactions, nothing like unit model packs or character face packs...

Anthem -

Following the controversial release of Mass Effect Andromeda, and the pulling of further development following that controversy, EA and Bioware walked into an even more controversial release. Anthem, a loot based shooter, released with frustrating and unrewarding loot mechanics. It also had a wide number of gamebreaking bugs. It additionally struggled due to a flagging online playerbase making matchmaking more and more difficult as players piled into the only game mode that was rewarding and consistently would match up a full party. However, while Anthem had a roadmap for further development, and claimed it would be "a 10 year journey", even the first updates were delayed due to the extensive amount of bugfixes needed. Eventually the entire roadmap was put on hold, and recent news stories suggest that a number of Bioware employees are jumping ship to other products. It is widely suspected that, like Mass Effect Andromeda, development on Anthem will soon cease as the company hopes Dragon Age 4 will change their recent woes.

How Can You Compare Paradox to Bethesda or Bioware?

Now I can already foresee criticism for comparing the "small niche gaming company of Paradox" to the relative giants of Bethesda and Bioware, but I'd like to challenge that assumption.

Bioware has, to the best of the estimates I can find, approximately 800 employees. Additionally they garnered a little over 1 billion USD in revenue in 2018.

Bethesda's numbers are lower, estimated to have gathered 50 million usd in revenue last year, likely due to the flop of 76. They are known to have around 400 employees.

Paradox is, positively I might add, more transparent about their revenue. Taking numbers from their public year end report we get this:

• Revenues for the period amounted to SEK 1,127.7 (112.77 million USD), an increase by 39 % compared to the same period last year.

• Operating profit amounted to SEK 455.1 (45.51 million USD), an increase by 34 %.

• Profit before tax amounted to SEK 455.2 (45.52 million USD), and profit after tax amounted to SEK 353.9 (35.39 million USD)

Paradox employs 405 employees.

So clearly, Paradox is not some tiny company. They are directly comparable to Bethesda in a number of financial metrics. It is perfectly fair to hold them to a similar standard as we might any major developer.

Double Standards and Sunk Costs

Now I would like to ask you this. What do you think the reaction would have been if Bethesda announced a 20 dollar MMO style expansion to Fallout 76 that would fill up a large chunk of the wasteland of 76 with new locations and quests? It would be outrage. When a game is sold at the price of what used to be given to games that were finished, being forced to invest more money to reach the standard you would have expected from a finished game.

Yet a very different standard is applied to Paradox. It is widely expected, in the CK2 era and onwards, that all new games from Paradox will have a dozen or more expansions, alongside plenty of cosmetic and flavor based cheaper expansions. This is clearly distinct from the games that predate CK2. EU3 had only 4 expansions, and Victoria 2 had only 2. These were full game overhauls each of them, the EU3 expansions being the ones that created many of the modern mechanics that we still see in EU4. While CK2, admittedly, seems to have now somewhat changed the focus from making more expansions for additional cost in favor of free patches to flesh out flavor and old game mechanics, let us not forget that it had 15 expansions.

This model seems to have captured the company's fanbase however, and most seem either accepting of the situation or resigned to it. Largely this is because of the lack of competition Paradox has in the grand strategy game, leaving fans of the genre held captive by Paradox, many developing the apt Stockholm Syndrome for the situation. Sure the model is exploitative, but where else am I going to get these types of games? I myself have been victim to this, I own every dlc for Crusader Kings 2. Because it sucked to boot up the game after a dlc came out, and see that there is content in the game that I could not interact with (a situation far far worse in EU4). So I have spent like 250 dollars or more on CK2 dlc over the years, and realizing that is shocking. We are fans of a type of game where the developer has an effective monopoly.

Is There A Solution?

If you, like me, find the current state of Paradox Development exploitative and unacceptable, there is sadly only one option. Stop purchasing their unfinished games, and most of all stop purchasing their DLC. I don't enjoy this idea at all, at their best Paradox games are fantastic. However, as it is clear that the primary motive of Paradox, especially since going public as a company, is profit, the only option we have is to speak to their bottom line. It is not impossible for these actions to cause severe effects to a company, Bethesda is notably struggling as mentioned above. They do not care about forum posts (and some like Johan are openly contemptuous of them), they care about revenue. I received Imperator for my birthday. I will not be purchasing any expansions for it, or for any other Paradox games from this point on.