CKII Subscription Service

[JNemoDoe]

Should have been an update/content as a parting gift to the players, not this.

If I was shaking my head just a bit harder right now it would come off.

Someone may have brought this up alreaday, but wasn't the great works update exactly this, A free content update meant as a gift for player?
I'm not really that much of a fan of the subscription; it's a good deal for the money, at $5 dollars for literally hundreds dollars worth of DLC, but I am afraid of this requiring an internet connection to verify that the subscription is still active, lest the player be locked out of a fair chunk of the game. A primarily single player game should not require a connection to a server.

 

[jonjowett]

Someone may have brought this up alreaday, but wasn't the great works update exactly this, A free content update meant as a gift for player?

I don't know if they ever gave an official explanation. In hindsight, it seems like the final few free patches were a mix of "final cleanup" and "developers' personal passion projects".

My (completely unsupported) hypothesis is:

• They knew CK3 was coming soon
  • (CK3 was released less than 2 years after HF. I expect CK3 development started at least 1-2 years before HF released.)
• => They wanted to wind down CK2 development and especially not release any more DLC
  • (Because releasing paid CK2 DLC a few months before announcing CK3 would be bad PR?)
• => The CK2 team suddenly have much less work BUT they don't want fire them
  • (Because it's hard to find good devs? Because there wasn't yet any need for them on the CK3 team?)
• => They let the CK2 team work on low-priority low-risk features for their remaining time before moving on to other projects.
  • (Plus Monarch's Journey, whose sole purpose was CK3 marketing.)

This fits the facts - but there are probably other explanations that work equally well. Unless Paradox says something on the subject, I doubt we'll ever really know. (And even then, a cynic might not fully believe them...)

 

[BjornB]

Someone may have brought this up alreaday, but wasn't the great works update exactly this, A free content update meant as a gift for player?
I'm not really that much of a fan of the subscription; it's a good deal for the money, at $5 dollars for literally hundreds dollars worth of DLC, but I am afraid of this requiring an internet connection to verify that the subscription is still active, lest the player be locked out of a fair chunk of the game. A primarily single player game should not require a connection to a server.

You can still buy the content the old fashioned way though. I know it's not ideal requiring an internet connection - but it's unfortunately the reality of subscription services. It's hard to come up with a solution that has no downsides for anyone, which is why we opted to offer a couple of different ones at least so that you chose the one best suited for you.