Any updates on devs working on IR again

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The modders are doing a great job but unfortunately there are some hardcoded issues that despite their hard work they can't really touch (change).

Regarding this and regarding modders being the developers now... if PDX really does end up abandoning I:R for good, maybe the last thing we should ask for is a final release which is solely aimed at increasing the ability to mod and fix the game. I think that's the least they should do. Well, I think they should do this even if they did restart development, but that's just me.
 
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I don't know what it means for IR, but Fredrik Wester coming back seems like good news overall for PDX!
Why do you think so?

He has been at the company all these years, including the expansion to mobile and buying out other studios.

Without knowing anything else, it seems they are cutting overheads preparing for a long period of meagre results.
 
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Why do you think so?

He has been at the company all these years, including the expansion to mobile and buying out other studios.

Without knowing anything else, it seems they are cutting overheads preparing for a long period of meagre results.
I think a lot of PDX problems are their organization, a lack of investment in certain types of roles, and their development cycles. You can see their current business/development model drive their games to the ground. The problem is that they rely on very long-term sales to make money. This is not sustainable if you cannot maintain quality products around.

PDX always released buggy games. However, they had the trust of the community to get it fixed, and to be honest they used to pull it off. This trust is partially gone. I used to buy everything PDX on day one no question ask (I have plenty of disposable income and I loved their games). Now: I do not buy anything PDX until it has been long enough so that the forum does not complain (and I have given up on some games that are beyond repair). PDX relies on people like me buying their DLCs, their drop in sales happens because fewer and fewer people are doing so. You cannot have a business model based on gazillion of DLC and not focusing on making your core audience happy. I also strongly, believe that the people who are actually making the games or not the ones who decided on the current dev cycles, and they are probably very unhappy about some of the results (obviously employees cannot complain too openly, but I think that is something that can be felt).

I think Fredrik understands the type of games PDX makes and it is under his direction they went from a very small studio to what they are now.
 
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The problem is that they rely on very long-term sales to make money.
Even if I believe this is true for PDS, we do not know if this model was the current one for PDX as a publisher. PDX has grown from a handful of employees to more than 300 with more people in sales and marketing than developing because their role as publisher (see last podcast). The money to grow came from big sales of big hits (magika, cities skylines) along the stable sales of PDX titles (EU, CK, HOI and Stellaris).

After becoming a public company, I believe they thought able to replicate their past successes and grow their structure to keep growing. However, they had some big flops as a publisher (Vampire, Empire of Sin) that have made them reconsider they future cash flow.

Adding COVID crisis in the mix and you have a company that has decided to cut expenses and downsize a little bit to keep profitability.

I do not see any impact in PDS with this change. What was going to happen to I:R with Ebba is going to happen without her.
PDX relies on people like me buying their DLCs, their drop in sales happens because fewer and fewer people are doing so.
Do you have numbers to prove this drop in sales? Not that I do not believe you, but I would like to contrast this statement.
 
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Even if I believe this is true for PDS, we do not know if this model was the current one for PDX as a publisher. PDX has grown from a handful of employees to more than 300 with more people in sales and marketing than developing because their role as publisher (see last podcast). The money to grow came from big sales of big hits (magika, cities skylines) along the stable sales of PDX titles (EU, CK, HOI and Stellaris).

After becoming a public company, I believe they thought able to replicate their past successes and grow their structure to keep growing. However, they had some big flops as a publisher (Vampire, Empire of Sin) that have made them reconsider they future cash flow.

Adding COVID crisis in the mix and you have a company that has decided to cut expenses and downsize a little bit to keep profitability.

I do not see any impact in PDS with this change. What was going to happen to I:R with Ebba is going to happen without her.

Do you have numbers to prove this drop in sales? Not that I do not believe you, but I would like to contrast this statement.
Their published games follow the same business model: tone of DLC (prison architect, cities skylines, surviving mars, battletech etc.). There it has been similarly underwhelming recently.

The only games that had a different model were the RPG ones and that's gone to Microsoft if I remember correctly.

Google game industry biz Paradox (I think I am not allowed to post links).
"We are not satisfied with the quarter," she said. "Sometimes there are periods with fewer and smaller game and expansion releases -- but we can do better than this and our ambitions are higher."

So they blame it on covid in the article. However, following other news over the past months they screwed up a lot of releases recently and HAD TO slow down their release schedule because their sales were already hurting (i.e. less and less people are buying expansions at full price). Over the last few years, they'd been focusing on churning out content while letting quality drop and that's not going to work even the studio has grown. With a title like CK3 they can compete with CIVs and Total War, but it means that they don't kill their own game by publishing crap DLC that breaks it (which is what they've been doing recently).

As far as I:R is concerned, I think the game is dead realistically. It should not have been published in the state it was. That's not the dev fault, they've shown they can produce something great, but the decisions that were made were bad and killed this game.

Empire of Sin is a flop because it has a similar problem to I:R at release. You publish an empty shallow game and then you promise to add more in DLCs. Sadly once people tried your game and find it shallow there are not many people left to buy whatever you want to sell...
 
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Their published games follow the same business model: tone of DLC (prison architect, cities skylines, surviving mars, battletech etc.). There it has been similarly underwhelming recently.

The only games that had a different model were the RPG ones and that's gone to Microsoft if I remember correctly.

Google game industry biz Paradox (I think I am not allowed to post links).


So they blame it on covid in the article. However, following other news over the past months they screwed up a lot of releases recently and HAD TO slow down their release schedule because their sales were already hurting (i.e. less and less people are buying expansions at full price). Over the last few years, they'd been focusing on churning out content while letting quality drop and that's not going to work even the studio has grown. With a title like CK3 they can compete with CIVs and Total War, but it means that they don't kill their own game by publishing crap DLC that breaks it (which is what they've been doing recently).

As far as I:R is concerned, I think the game is dead realistically. It should not have been published in the state it was. That's not the dev fault, they've shown they can produce something great, but the decisions that were made were bad and killed this game.

Empire of Sin is a flop because it has a similar problem to I:R at release. You publish an empty shallow game and then you promise to add more in DLCs. Sadly once people tried your game and find it shallow there are not many people left to buy whatever you want to sell...
I think Ck3 struggle with empy aswell and the new DLC is not gonna fix that as of yet and the DLC is apparently 30 bux the highest payed DLC in CK history, this is their first big DLC for CK3..... i just wounder how expensive whil the upcomming DLCs be for Ck3 since this one is gonna be 30 bux.
merge cultures
create cultures
archifacts
a court room for 30 bux

we dont even have empire goverment i cinda hoped they focus on more basic mechanics in the DLC....
 
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I think a lot of PDX problems are their organization, a lack of investment in certain types of roles, and their development cycles. You can see their current business/development model drive their games to the ground. The problem is that they rely on very long-term sales to make money. This is not sustainable if you cannot maintain quality products around.

PDX always released buggy games. However, they had the trust of the community to get it fixed, and to be honest they used to pull it off. This trust is partially gone. I used to buy everything PDX on day one no question ask (I have plenty of disposable income and I loved their games). Now: I do not buy anything PDX until it has been long enough so that the forum does not complain (and I have given up on some games that are beyond repair). PDX relies on people like me buying their DLCs, their drop in sales happens because fewer and fewer people are doing so. You cannot have a business model based on gazillion of DLC and not focusing on making your core audience happy. I also strongly, believe that the people who are actually making the games or not the ones who decided on the current dev cycles, and they are probably very unhappy about some of the results (obviously employees cannot complain too openly, but I think that is something that can be felt).

I think Fredrik understands the type of games PDX makes and it is under his direction they went from a very small studio to what they are now.
Ur second paragraph pretty much sums up my feelings tbh . Ever since they dropped Imperator, I haven’t been buying any of their new DLCs, even though I used to buy a lot of them jsit before. I guess my excitement for paradox has pretty much diminished once u realise there is no longer the same pull factor as they used to have of updating games once released.

Let’s see how Vic III goes on launch to see if paradox can turn itself around.
 
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No one wants to work for paradox, just look at the job listings;


Until they can get employees dont expect anyone on IR.

Its nothing to do with the dlc model, or anything that people are speculating, they just cant get the staff to work on all the games.
 
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No one wants to work for paradox, just look at the job listings;


Until they can get employees dont expect anyone on IR.

Its nothing to do with the dlc model, or anything that people are speculating, they just cant get the staff to work on all the games.
Or thay can't find people qualified enough that would augment the teams well. Kind of a strange conclusion take from that without any other context.
 
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Or thay can't find people qualified enough that would augment the teams well. Kind of a strange conclusion take from that without any other context.
the thing is that there is other context available. There are many infamous glassdoor exit interviews which paint the company as a bad place to work. Not to mention the recent drama with nearly half of employees (and more than 2/3 of female employees) reporting hostile or abusive behavior.
 
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