Paradox bussiness model relies heavily on sale of DLCs. You make a game and then you keep selling expansions for next decade or so. In the end if someone bought all of the expansions at once it would cost him hundreds of dollars. BUT since individual DLC's are relatively cheap you can get away with it. Because no one will purchase all DLCs at once and see the price tag.
Instead they will buy one expansion, and another few weeks later and so on. But if you raise prices too much you get to point where people no longer see your DLC's as cheap and instead of buying one each month, they start buying them once every six months. Since they will feel like it's a large purchase and they need think about it.
Now I don't think you are there yet, except for Brazil and Russia, but if you get there your revenue will go down and eventually so will your profits, because first thing your accountants will recommend are cuts and layoffs and those almost never work.
I agree with you.
I apologize if I sounded a bit harsh. It s just a bit too disappointed for me when I have tried actively promoting PDX products among my friends for a long time.
The other thing I have to add is we, paradox fans, have already accepted that PDX dlcs generally dont have much in its contents, even if grudgingly, esp. now with eu4 dlc, you have both the main dlc like The mandates of heaven and its content pack which should be included in the dlc. Let's be honest, content-wise, it would take at least 3 or 4 eu4 DLC to make it into a normal expansion like that of EU3 or other more normal and less greedy game like Witcher 3(Blood and Wine cost about 60% of the base game), Fallout: New Vegas(all their main dlcs are quite worth it), Civ 5(BNW and GK cost about the same of the same game)， or even Pillars of Eternity, a game PDX publishes and couldnt escape the fate of price hiking. Each part of White March of PoE cost about 52% of the base game. And we can all agree these are only a few examples of how expansion should be properly done.
Current pricing at steam
Witcher 3: CNY 127
Witcher 3: Blood and Wine CNY 72
Hearts of Stone CNY 36
Expansion Pass CNY 78
Civ 5, GK, BNW : each at CNY 95
Pillars of Eternity: CNY 185 (originally CNY 122 before yesterday, it suffers since PDX published it, a 51% increase)
Both White March together: CNY 103 (originally CNY 78 before yesterday)
Each part individually: CNY 62 (originally CNY 48 before yesterday)
Now, however with EU4, if we add the least 3 essential dlcs together, the price would now go to CNY 246. if we add the accompanying Content Pack, it would go to CNY 345. Now if we add the least 4 together, it would go to CNY 454. I just dont find any way to justify this cost when I try to recommend your games to my friends, or even any justification for myself to continue any PDX product purchase on release or at all.
3 latest EU4 DLC combined without Content Pack: CNY 246 (originally CNY 204). 3 latest EU4 DLC with its CP: CNY 345 (originally CNY 291)
4 latest EU4 DLC combined without Content Pack: CNY 328 (originally CNY 272). 4 latest EU4 DLC with its CP: CNY 454 (originally CNY 384)
In short, I've put up with the absurd DLC policy for too long, and now the absudity just got worse.
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