CK3 - Changes to Flavor Pack Pricing

[EarlKonrad]

I don't think I've ever heard of a company doubling the price of DLC months after releasing it.

Maybe not DLC, but the world of regional pricing is wild. I'm from Brazil. An year after Warhammer 1 came out I bought it at full price (100 BRL at the time). About six years later, when Warhammer 2 was winding down its development cycle, they increased the base price of both Warhammer 1 & 2 both to 250 BRL.

There are precedents for increasing the price of older tittles, be they games or expansions, and sadly it rarely gets any attention outside of its own community. Unless the press gets involved and talking about it.

 

[Ironlion45]

I'm struggling to find a polite way to express my reaction to this. But here goes:

I just checked the calendar to make sure that it wasn't April First.

Since it isn't, I cannot possibly fathom what reasoning made this move seem like a good idea.

I'm a big fan of several of your games, Paradox. But things like this...you're making it hard for me to justify continuing to support your products. And worse, you're making not want to buy your games OR (and especially) DLCs anymore. You do this now, you're going to pay for it tomorrow in lost revenue. Mark my words.

 

[Bobwoodword]

I have argued before that Paradox developers deserve to be held responsible for their own actions and that not everything is the responsibility of a nameless greedy hack in a suit. This is not one of those times. I sympathize with devs who have no control of corporate pricing and yet will likely be subject to the consequences of this bizarre decision.

This is not done. Period. I would challenge anyone to come up with an example where a major developer has taken a DLC created in the last year and a half and doubled its price on a whim. Nevermind a DLC package that many considered underwhelming in terms of content to begin with. I'm not personally impacted by this. I bought the Royal Edition. It won't impact me. But this sort of baffling decision is a massive red flag. Who is making the decision at Paradox? You probably don't even know his name. But this person has gone out on an absolute limb. I am used to this forum healthily debating both sides of the coin but 13 pages in and I cannot find a single person seriously attempting to justify this. And that is because the decision cannot be justified.

This was a man in a room who told another man who did not want to do something that he had to do it and the guy in the room obeyed because he was going to get fired if he argued otherwise. It was a man who doesn't have an interest in hearing others opinions and simply looks at a spreadsheet, himself perhaps under deep pressure from another superior to generate revenue, and makes a call.

Maybe this works out. But wildly out of the ordinary pricing decisions are almost always an indicator of choppy waters. They indicate a deep issue with the finances of the game or a deep issue with leadership. Either way it's not encouraging for the future of CK3.

 

[Ironlion45]

I would challenge anyone to come up with an example where a major developer has taken a DLC created in the last year and a half and doubled its price on a whim.

I'm thinking, to make the subscription model they're planning on rolling out actually look like a good deal by comparison?

Which btw, Paradox executives (if you do check forums), If new content becomes subscription only, I'm just going to go play games that I actually own instead.

 

[steampvnc1880]

ugh. great. now I have to wait until its 75 percent off to get it for a price resembling it's "true value"

 

[Licarious]

ugh. great. now I have to wait until its 75 percent off to get it for a price resembling it's "true value"

When was the last time we had one of those discounts for DLCs on Steam, 2015 for 75% off and 2016 for 66% off? Another great loss from Paradox going public.

 

[GeeGoat]

So we get less comm, less content, less bug fixing.. gotta to pay more and you are moving toward suscription model. Good luck!

 

[IndigoRage]

Maybe this works out. But wildly out of the ordinary pricing decisions are almost always an indicator of choppy waters. They indicate a deep issue with the finances of the game or a deep issue with leadership. Either way it's not encouraging for the future of CK3.

I am definitely calling this being a victim of corporate's interest in transitioning to subscription models. If they can make actually buying the DLC outright look less enticing they can hook more people who want to play anyway to a reliable monthly ~$5+ that looks good at the end of every quarter.

 

[tivilon]

who's managing this game? really seems like you guys have no idea what you want to do with it other than drag it thru the mud and punish fans. legit makes me angry Paradox has the monopoly it does on the grand strategy genre cuz they get to pull garbage like this and there isn't much we can do about it cuz where else are you gonna go? I'd say do better but ya'll are too focused on dollar signs to care

 

[Nevars]

Some time back I think CEO of PDX said that competitors have higher prices of their DLC. I wonder what they meant by competitors.

They probably means The Sims 4.

Cuz expansion pack in TS4 cost more than double of CK3 expansion but with even less content and it still sell lol

 

[xtremzero]

Why are you increasing prices? We're not getting any bonus content, and had to wait for supppmentary patches to get all the dlc content?

not mentioning them taking literally 2 years to fix some long standing and confirmed bugs

 

[xtremzero]

How is fates good. Rite is still bugged, so most mozarabic stuff is subsequently bugged. Jewish content got delayed. Jews now instantly convert iberia rather than slowly gaining power. Struggle clash cb makes things easier than holy war ever did. Dissolution was broken on release with how often it fired and is now semi broken with titles not being destroyed. Umayyads still break up into 3 rather than just being given partition. Castile somehow exists in 867 but aragon cant for some reason

ANNNNNNND don't forget the good old bug where nearby rulers of the same faith do not join defensive holy wars despite the tooltip explicitly saying they will.

 

[tzeneth]

I'm kind of sitting here flabbergasted. Paradox already has a bad reputation with regards to their DLC and releases. Stellaris has started to regain its reputation because of recent policies and its intent to make even older DLC have more value and make things more unified and working. There are a ton of bugs and things that don't work with CK3, seem to not work as intended, or just don't have the proper amount of polish. There also seems to be heavy vision issues. Stellaris uses its dev updates to give you a sense of where they want to go, what they're working on, and get into their thought processes. Vicky 3 does the same thing, even if it's more hyping up a game that will eventually be coming out but you still get a sense of what their vision for the game is.

I don't know what the vision for CK3 is. I don't know the direction the developers plan on taking the game. I'm trying to remember the last time I seriously played the game and, honestly, it hasn't been for the DLC. Usually I'm only playing because I get an urge that relatively quickly disappears after playing for a short bit or I'm doing something with friends which doesn't last long because organizing people for a consistent game is hard. It's been 2 years and I'm not sure what I've gotten from what I purchased. The big things I love from CK2 aren't here. I don't think a new government type or the big things people want seem to even be on the horizon.

To top all of this off, we go from the break and radio silence to a price adjustment announcement without any build up, without any sugar to go with the bitter. This is just a straight up PR disaster. The fact no explanation was given, not even the fig leaf of one indicates either this was done with no internal support or there isn't even a decent reason people could come up with that wouldn't backfire on them if they tried it. The hope here seems to be it'll just blow over but if I had my guess, some of the smaller gaming news people will jump on this as it perfectly plays into the narrative of Paradox having a terrible DLC policy. Once the small gaming news people get some clicks, then it'll drive attention to it and it'll become a big story or at least one talked about. Throw on top that you have people throwing negative reviews on steam and things don't look great. It just seems so foolish and done by someone who just couldn't see how obvious the reaction and chain of events would be.

 

[SiegOderValhalla]

I started off playing CK1, EU2, and HoI1, so I've been playing Paradox games for two decades at this point. EU4 is my most played game on Steam at over 2,500 hours, I own all the DLC for CK2, and I love what the Stellaris team has been doing over the years. But I have had serious reservations about Paradox's general direction for awhile now (see things like Imperator) and decided not to buy CK3 at launch to see how Paradox would handle filling out a successor game to a fully DLC'd older game because I didn't trust y'all to do a good job. I am saddened that my suspicions have proven correct. Glacially slow content updates which prove to be threadbare, buggy, and, especially now, overpriced isn't going to get me to jump on yet another DLC buying simulator - particularly when CK2 still exists.

 

[Amtep]

If I understand correctly. This is a promise that future Flavor Packs will be top tier? We will see.

Would be nice to make a statement about what is next.

No they're promising the opposite. They're saying that the existing flavor packs are already worth that much. So expect future flavor packs to be in line with those.

 

[johnnybgood89]

This is first time in my life that I see that some game/DLC increase in price over time... What is this a new trend - released content is following inflation?

 

[Borgia]

released content is following inflation?

Everything seems to be except my paycheck.

 

[DinoMight]

hahahahah they are releasing a card game, but no new content for ck3 and increasing the price for already released content? woooooooow

 

[johnnybgood89]

Everything seems to be except my paycheck.

And mine. I feel you friend :/

 

[Djambo]

There is this movie Dave where the protagonist at some point wants to cut the american budget by a large amount of dollars.
In there is this somewhat exact dialogue:

Dave: We are spending $47m on an ad campaign to boost consumer confidence in the american auto industry?
Minister: It is designed to bolster the individual confidence in a previous domestic automotive purchase.
Dave: So, we are spending $47m so that somebody can feel better about a car that they already bought?

As an analogy Paradox is boosting our confidence in possible future car purchases (DLC) by increasing the price tag for upcoming new models and retroactively for older outdated models. In the case of something you have in your hand that makes sense because of increased prices in production, but in the case of 1s and 0s as digital value not really and sounds more like a rip-off. Unless they bolster the value of old models by putting in leather seats or a golden stick shift in the future (i. e. doubling the amount of content).

In general I find the DLC and price policy reasonable, because Paradox cannot force me to buy the (full) game or a DLC. I have the option to open my wallet or have it stay closed. Eventually I buy the stuff I want anyway, but than rather on sale. But that is still my option. And compared to a bad movie night a DLC is rather cheap.

My heart goes out to the poor lads in CM who have to weather the storm of toxicity and DebbieElla who has also to read the muck some emit, instead of the suits that made that decision especially on the silly retroactive part.