A New Price Increase?

[Sanny]

I've noticed that Paradox Interactive might plan to blanket-increase prices again (as in April/May 2017) as indicated by this Dev Diary, and I also read on the forum a couple of months ago that keeping the games at the current price was only temporary whilst they dealt with damage control, is this truly the case? Or will prices increase only on selective games and content?

Whilst I'm not too overly opposed to a price increase (provided we are given ample warning like in the Dev Diary above), I am concerned that this will still be an issue on older titles as it was earlier this year, where prices increased on products like Hearts of Iron III Collection by +33% (£30 > £40) regardless of the title's age.

I just wanted to voice my opinion on the matter, and make sure that this time we (the community) receive the facts clearly, so any official responses would be greatly appreciated.

 

[CookieMonk]

Yes, indeed i also would like some kind of response from "Paradox" on this. I just hope they don`t raise prices too crazy on the old games, not again. I look forward to how they will inform us of this before hand, i really don`t want to go through (April/May 2017) once again. I hope this is all premature on my part and "Paradox" is listening to the people who buy their products.

 

[Mr. Capiatlist]

As far as I can gather from the DD you linked, the OST was going from $4.99 to $6.99 with the promise that it would be constantly updated with new music rather than people having to buy the new music when listening outside of the game (i.e. the $2 increase gives you all future music instead of the OST as it is now):

The first part of this endeavour will be to make the music available through Steam. Rather than add multiple new music packs each time we create new music, we will be rolling all existing and new music into the Stellaris Official Sound Track (OST). In conjunction with this, the price of the OST on Steam, will increase from $4.99 to $6.99 (USD or regional equivalent), with the information displayed on the store page changed to reflect that the OST is all music ever created for Stellaris (this price change will apply to all countries). This is going to be a living OST, it will contain music from the base game, Leviathans, Utopia, Synthetic Dawn and all future paid content as well, for one fixed price.

In fact, with this heads up you can get all the future music for "free" if you buy the OST now before the price increases:

Those of you interested in buying the OST, now is a great time to do it, before we change the price. Everyone who currently owns the OST, and those that own it by the 2nd November, will naturally get all the music at no extra charge.

It also clearly outlines that if you already have the OST through the Nova/Galaxy bundle that you don't need to buy the OST to enjoy the upgrades, but that Steam says you can buy it because it doesn't recognize it as part of the bundle:

Stellaris OST for Nova/Galaxy owners

• You will also get all the songs we add in the future
• Please note that you will still be able to buy the Stellaris OST in Steam as that has a different item ID than the game bundle, hence Steam doesn't know you already own the OST!

 

[Sanny]

As far as I can gather from the DD you linked, the OST was going from $4.99 to $6.99 with the promise that it would be constantly updated with new music rather than people having to buy the new music when listening outside of the game (i.e. the $2 increase gives you all future music instead of the OST as it is now.

Ah so the price increase for that is simply because new songs will be added over time to the existing music? $6.99 is the price of any standard music album after all, so it is fair. I must have missed that point. Hopefully this was just a misunderstanding on my behalf and means no new "across the board" price increase.

 

[Dnote]

This price increase is only due to us changing the content of the OST and as we are changing the content of something that people have already purchased we felt it was important to inform them in advance of it. Also informing people in advance of the price increase gives them the opportunity to purchase it at the lower price if they want to.

Nothing else beyond that.