| Title | Do you love Europa Universalis IV enough to pay a subscription? |
| Author | Nick Diamon |
| Posted in | News |
| When | January 22, 2020 |
Paradox feels your pain. The din of gamers wanting to get into their grand strategy games, but unable to get over the hump of hundreds of dollars worth of DLC, (I'm looking at you, Crusader Kings 2) has been heard..
This is interesting. I wonder if it could actually hurt their future sales?
Short answer: no. My gaming time is too irregular (read I go months with zero time) to have a subscription approach being sensible.
I’m not even willing to pay for cable TV; I am certainly not lining up to pay game creators subs to play their game. I mean hundreds of dollars is too much, whether you suck it out of me a pound of flesh at a time or send mites to take bites at regular intervals.
I would pay $5 a month, the same as gamepass, to have access to new games like CK3 or EU5 or Vicky3 and ongoing DLC for HOI4 and all titles.
That pattern is what makes subscriptions work for me when they do, assuming you can pause/cancel when you’re inactive. I’d rather own a one-time software license if I’m using it regularly.
Wait. So they “heard” people complaining about the DLC strategy and responded by making it even-worse with an in-perpetuity subscription system? Because that totally makes sense for people who can’t do basic math?
Thanks but nooooooooope.
I’ll keep buying the base games I’m interested in and then the DLCs that aren’t cosmetic on the semi-annual sales.
Diego
I can see a Netflix-style subscription service for Paradox being of value to some people, but isn’t that what the Xbox game pass does? Or do they not include the DLC?
What they should really do is have a policy where 2-3 years after a DLCs release the DLC becomes free, or something.
They could just… package it in a coherent fashion and charge a reasonable price. I mean according to steam it would cost someone $340+ to buy the full experience of the game today. That’s nuts. But hey if you signed up for the sub service and paid for it for 6 years you wind up paying… 360 dollars for the privilege of playing a couple of games from one developer.
But hey, they’re getting some real innovative ideas from… TV Channels. That’s right, they’re taking ideas from the cable companies that are shedding customers by the millions.
This is where you lose me because $340-$360 for 6 years of gaming bliss is great value!
They do need to think of some solution to the ‘full pricetag’, but so many of the criticisms are disingenuous because noone is actually paying $340+ to buy the full experience of the game. EU4 is a great example, you only need to pay a tiny fraction of that to get the full experience on humble right now. They do regular sales, tell newbies to just get the base game to try it out (which alone will give hundreds upon hundreds of hours of entertainment), etc…
I’ve had this game since practically release. I’ve had it for 6 years and you know how many more years I can have it… for as long as I can keep it running or until or if I replace it with 5. I don’t need their permission to keep playing it, and I paid nowhere close to 300 to get it because I won’t pay their asking price. Guess what, I had 3 too, and CK1, and bet all my Paradox games wouldn’t come close to what they would charge a monthly fee to get.
But hey I am sure subs will be a great bargain. Every developer you can think of can just charge five dollars a month, you can juggle hundreds of these models, and we’ll go to the full on rent model so many of the creators have been trying to get for years.
Or they can charge the new game price, release at a more reasonable pace and charge a reasonable price after some time. Don’t forget to check the reviews on this content… I mean how much of it is really good. Not much I guess since you have a take it or leave it approach. I don’t know a lot of gamers that would purposefully leave a good expansion on the table for a game they still like.
Oh, I agree, I wouldn’t ever use a game subscription model to play Paradox games. It might be useful for someone who wants to try and see what all the fuss is about, must have access to all the bells and whistles, for a very small upfront investment.
By the way, you do need Steam’s permission to keep playing it (or are Paradox games DRM-free)? To some extent gamers have already lost this battle.
Paradox just will try to club their fanbase into this by never having good sales.
This convinces me more and more I made the right call by quitting their games outright.
That is their choice. But it would also likely dry up sales and maybe eventually even kill the company.
Very true. Although I didn’t originally buy that game on Steam. I was forced to go to Steam from Gamersgate… by Paradox.
Their games are unique, and their DLC style extreme. I don’t know how you hear that and go to sub models but hey I’ve yet to see anything coming out of Paradox that implies maliciousness. I just think this is… not a good idea.
This industry won’t do MoviesAnywhere. They’re erecting a field of tiny little gardens with bodyguards at the door and expensive tickets instead. Who knows if MVA will last forever or even long, but at least it’s designed as a library and all the players do not have to survive to keep that going.
The subscription is just to allow you access to the dozens of dlc we’ve made through the years.
If you already have them all, or just want to play with what you got, you dont have to subscribe.
This is just another alternative for people to get access to DLC.
Hey, as long as you sell them as stand alone purchases, knock yourself out.
I’ve got pretty much all of them anyhow.
Also I hold you personally responsible for absorbing roughly 2/3 of my gaming time since EU IV came out. Which is probably a compliment ;)
So long as there isn’t a minimum subscription period, I’d much prefer the subscription model. Pay $5 a month, for a single month each year, to binge on the latest version of the game. As is I played at release and then wait years and years until all DLC is deeply discounted because I want to avoid paying so much for DLC at release and dislike knowing how far behind I am if I buy last year’s DLC but still lack this year’s.
Whether this is good for PDX or not is unclear. On the one hand, they definitely make more money from me, steadily each year, rather than in a final DLC binge years later. On the other those that buy all DLC on day one may not change their behavior, or subscribe full time, or dip in like me - the last being a big loss of revenue.
Given how little time I tend to actually put into their games at the end of the day, it would probably be better if I just spent $5 or something, got bored and cancelled.
Somehow I doubt it will be that simple at the end of the day though.
Eh, I do that all the time. I rarely buy DLC outside of a handful of games (of which EUIV is one). I just struggle to find the will to return to most story-based games after the initial playthrough, particularly when my backlog is calling to me. Witcher 3 is the only recent one I can think of.
I can totally see myself doing a Paradox subscription, assuming a) it’s easy to re-up for a couple of months at a time, and b) it’s day and date with the DLC releases. I tend to binge on a Paradox game and then drop it for a year or more while I wait for more DLC to come out. I would certainly get more value out of it than, say the Ubisoft subscription, or EA’s full-price one.
