Paradox Interactive profits drop YOY 90% due to Life By You cancellation
(www.gamesindustry.biz)
Comments (16)
sorted by:
Haha!
Yes, hopefully shutting down their San Fagcisco branch makes them less shit, but they're Swedish so I wouldn't bet on it.
Well, maybe. If you talk about Swedes in general, yes, the cuckery is meme-tier (although I think the rest of Europe, and maybe the whole world, has caught up since the heyday of Sweden YES, honestly.)
If you talk specifically about Swedes in video gaming, you get Notch and PewDiePie as the most famous examples, and if anything they both lean slightly right. Paradox itself is more of a mixed bag… the core of their grand strategy titles is usually good, and they allow you to do heinous things or play as villains with no problem. BUT their DLC strategy is too aggressive, and signs of rot have definitely been there. For example, all the human portrait packs in Stellaris have Hollywood-tier multiracial lineups, CKIII and Victoria III are not as good as their predecessors from what I hear, Imperator: Rome was mediocre, etc.
Their DLC strategy is arguably no better than the major devs who will release broken games and then fix them afterwards with patches. Paradox usually releases working games, but then fundamentally changes many of their dynamics every time they release a new DLC, so that the game is suddenly different even if you didn't buy the DLC or activate it. It's really irritating.
And on top of that they went full woke with CK III, and that was the Swedish studio.
They keep prior releases available under 'betas' in the properties of the game on steam, and you can roll back to basically any of them. The versions from before EU's GDPR became law don't meet the law's requirement to show you the games privacy policy so they are locked behind a code you can get from paradox where they show you their privacy policy first in order to be compliant. One code per game, and once entered the oldest versions remain available without further effort.
All of their main studio flagship titles can be rolled back to the version where the game was at its best, regardless of which version you think that is, and I really wish more studios offered this functionality. If they do something stupid we can keep playing a version where the game was still good.
Mods will be a bigger problem, but you can use Irony mod manager to bundle up a bunch of mods into one mega mod which you can then store somewhere for use with that particular version of the game and prevent your breaking from updates.
Wow, I was unaware of that. That raises my opinion of them.
Stellaris in particular basically turned into an entirely different game with the move from 1.9 to 2.0 when they ditched the three different FTL methods for hyperlanes for all, and again when they moved from 2.1 to 2.2 when they ditched planetary tiles for the jobs-based system still in use today.
It's fun to roll back to some of these prior versions now and then to enjoy those old systems. I actually liked the old starbase influence projection system from pre 2.0. Just wish I'd saved some of the mods.
It just keeps getting worse, Paradox management got beaten with the stupid stick.
That's okay, they'll make things worse with the next DLC. $30, please.
Had no idea what this game is. Took a quick peek at the trailer.
Jesus. It's a worse and way (way) woke version of the SIMS. I mean like aggressively woke. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
This is a big blow, but it's not as bad as it sounds. They just deducted the loss of LBY from their gains this quarter. All bills and payroll is still being paid, and next quarter they will brag about the increased profit margin while announcing whatever new project is going to replace LBY.
What's keeping Paradox alive at this point?
DLC
DLC for what? HOI4 is running out of countries to add content for. Stellaris? Every single sci-fi trope has been added. Do they have any other successful game?
...what with the what now?