Paradox Has to Do Better Bottom Line

[whosthebestcop]

Since Going Public in 2016

1. Tyranny 2016 - Minor Success - It was a minor title for Obsidian

2. NECROPOLIS: BRUTAL EDITION - 2016 - Day 1 Failure - Overall Failure DEAD

3. Surviving Mars - 2018 - Minor Success. However the Devs parted with Pdox over undisclosed issues and have went on to more successful games. Aka Jagged Alliance 3 which released to goods sales and strong reviews.

4. BATTLETECH - 2018 - Big Success even bought the dev studio. more to come

5. Imperator: Rome - 2019 - Day 1 Failure - Overall Failure - DEAD Game

6. Age of Wonders: Planetfall - 2019 - Successful launch but very niche

7. Crusader Kings III - 2020- Major Success - Paradox biggest in house and published game to date since 2016

8. Empire of Sin - 2020 - Day 1 Failure - DEAD Game. Devs abandoned and potential class action law suit for selling a #2 DLC that was will never be made an still currently sells on steam

9. Surviving the Aftermath - 2021 - Minor success as it is a niche genre. Devs brought in to reskin after the Mars guys left

10. Victoria 3 = 2022 - Day 1 Failure - Overall Failure - Possible soon to be DEAD game even after 12 months of trying to fix it.

11. Age of Wonders 4 - 2023 - Success. Again a niche title in a 4x genre. It succeeds but doesnt come close to a top seller. But good game.

12. The Lamplighters League - Oct 2023 - DAY 1 Fail. Dead Game. Studio Sacked. Support dropped Jan 1st. From the devs Harebrained Schemes who made Battletech and ShadowRun. This game cost the studio their jobs. Huge internal fights with Pdox. The studio did not want to make this game but were bought by Pdox and had no choice.

13. Star Trek: Infinite - Oct 2024 - Day 1 FAIL - This just isnt a good or complete game. Not really buggy just not good and half complete

14. Cities: Skylines II - Oct 2024 - DAY 1 FAIL - Future unknown.

Ok the above is the reason people are pissed. CS1 was only know because of Pdox. All the life long Pdox community were the first to buy into the game. We are talking people who been with Pdox since before Pdox was even on Steam.

Paradox is in complete shambles since going public. Just look at published and developed games. It like reading the obituaries. Pdox had 3 failure this October on Day 1 from all uncomplete games. All Pdox failures whether developed or published have gone the same way. The games arent finished.

Pdox is a public company worth hundreds of millions with 600 employees they could not fix either Vicky3 or Rome and that was 2 huge in house IPs. So sorry is it very questionable CO with 30 employees can fix CS2.

PDox has stated they lost 23 million on Lamplighters League which was obviously a small niche game that could never generate that sales in a turn base stealth tactical game. That is almost like Xcom money or even half xcom money. This game had 0 shot at every selling > 500k units.

CS1 sold over 12 million units. Pdox took a beating first week. If they expected 23 million from lamplighters they probably expected >1 million units sold first week like BG3. CS2 did not sell close to 1 million copies.

Paradox completely funds CS2 and if after 6 months its not selling they could easily declare it dead. They have done it to their own developed games which cost way way more

 

[prismaticmarcus]

Moved to Paradox General Discussion

 

[LeandroB]

Vic 3 is a economic success and is still holding a decent player base.
It is a far cry from what people expected, but to call it a failure is absurd. Where do you get that from?

 

[Lys91]

Vic 3 is a economic success and is still holding a decent player base.
It is a far cry from what people expected, but to call it a failure is absurd. Where do you get that from?

It may not be a total failure, but reactions are mild at best. It was a very disappointing release for a lot of the community, and the progress made in a year is underwhelming. They are adding features that were planned before release (e.g., troop movement on the map was clearly something they had planned to do and should have been done). While other additions (e.g., companies) are completely underwhelming and uninteresting.

A lot of those issues are also not helped by their communication strategy. We see it with Vic3 and CS2 where there are clear problems, that they never clearly and fully acknowledged. I would be a lot more forgiving if they communicated more honestly about the states of their games.

 

[Darrenb209]

I wouldn't call Vic 3 dead, but it's certainly dying and has been for a while.

The steam forum is mostly unmoderated discussion and every few weeks you get political discussion only vaguely related to the game that quickly moves away from that, you've got communist apologists out in force and denial of mass murder committed by Stalin and Mao occurring fairly regularly without a crackdown from moderation staff and you get the occasional blatant fascist doing the same for Nazism too.

The DLC are all mixed to negative and the playerbase is dwindling faster and faster at least according to the various sites that list that type of thing.

I think the next Update/DLC will be the deciding factor on whether it's a revival or a slow walk down Imperator's path. If it's as poorly received as all the rest, if the update doesn't drag more people back into the game... well, the modern focus on profitability will most likely see the game to it's funeral.

 

[LeandroB]

Imperator had less than 800 players on daily basis on Steam during most of its life cicle, Vic 3 has 8,954.
It is significantly more popular.
And yes, theres a lot to be fixed right now, but the 1.5 update seens to be quite feature complete and it adresses most of people's concerns. Things are looking a lot better than it was a year ago.
The 1.5 update was already really well received by the community as it is on Beta for quite a while, if Paradox keeping pushing foward like that, then theres a bright future ahead of Vic3.
Vic 3 is far from dead, and looking at HoI4 and Stellaris popularity at launch and now, with the right content on future DLC it can become what the community expected it to be.

 

[whosthebestcop]

Imperator had less than 800 players on daily basis on Steam during most of its life cicle, Vic 3 has 8,954.
It is significantly more popular.
And yes, theres a lot to be fixed right now, but the 1.5 update seens to be quite feature complete and it adresses most of people's concerns. Things are looking a lot better than it was a year ago.
The 1.5 update was already really well received by the community as it is on Beta for quite a while, if Paradox keeping pushing foward like that, then theres a bright future ahead of Vic3.
Vic 3 is far from dead, and looking at HoI4 and Stellaris popularity at launch and now, with the right content on future DLC it can become what the community expected it to be.

You are making it seem like 8k is a lot. Vic3 was one of the Original Big 4 Pdox in house games. It is dwarfed in daily players by euiv, hoi iv, and ck3. the numbers arent even close.

Vic3 as it stands at this moment is still a failure it is still waiting its big patch and the future is uncertain. IF it doesnt 3x-5x its user base then it is a failure. Even if it stays the same it is still pseudo dead.

I didnt state Vic3 is 100% Dead just that it is possible Dead. Which at this time it is still possible dead.

 

[elektrizikekswerk]

Please refer to this thread if you want to talk about player numbers in V3. No need to drag that disussion into the General area...

Player retention comparted to CK3 first 2 weeks after release

Not that much data yet, but still kinda interesting to look at imho: source: https://steamdb.info Edit: Removed datapoint for "Days since Release" 13 (day not over yet as pointed out by @johnty5)

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Tullaris]

Vicky 3 is a succes. Your expectations are just too unrealistic. Vicky 2 was a game that had 2000 players tops concurrently. Vicky 3 has greatly increased the play amount in the franchise. You expect an EU4/HOI4/Stellaris/CK player level on day one, but that has to be built, as each of those games did.

Also before the PDX IPO in 2016 Paradox had a lot and i mean A LOT more flops. Sengoku, March of the Eagles, not even to mention the long list of terrible quality published titles.

CS2 is already a commercial succes and when its patched, most agree about this, has the potential of being the best city builder ever.

 

[Baalzamon85]

OP a tip, try not to be so hyperbolic in your initial post and you might generate more fruitful discussion rather than triggering people with your opinions on Victoria 3 which a lot of the community doesn't share.

Having said that, Paradox has not been doing good. You even fail to mention the biggest disaster of vampire bloodlines 2..
There are some bad tendensies by paradox: Releasing games no matter what the state of the game is on release. Leaving initial buyers with an bad taste in their mouths before eventually maybe fixing their game. Maybe Paradox should call their releases early access or public betas because they certainly feel that way sometimes.

Not designing their games with performance and AI in mind ahead of time, I get the feeling they are treated as an afterthought once all the mechnics are in place with no regard how it would effect performance or the AI , these are complicated problems that I don't think is given enough weight during development. It's getting really bad in paradox games and they only seem to get worse as more DLC's get added. The latest paradox games are really bad in these areas right out the gate, imagine after the mechanics bloat how bad they will be later..

 

[LeandroB]

Not designing their games with performance and AI in mind ahead of time, I get the feeling they are treated as an afterthought once all the mechnics are in place with no regard how it would effect performance or the AI , these are complicated problems that I don't think is given enough weight during development. It's getting really bad in paradox games and they only seem to get worse as more DLC's get added. The latest paradox games are really bad in these areas right out the gate, imagine after the mechanics bloat how bad they will be later..

EU4 got a second life once Paradox Tinto stopped production and spent a few good months working on performance and bug crushing.
And if Cities: Skylines 2 proved something, is that abismal performance can really screw up a release.

 

[fukraa020]

PDox has stated they lost 23 million on Lamplighters League which was obviously a small niche game that could never generate that sales in a turn base stealth tactical game. That is almost like Xcom money or even half xcom money. This game had 0 shot at every selling > 500k units.

 

[whosthebestcop]

PDox has stated they lost 23 million on Lamplighters League which was obviously a small niche game that could never generate that sales in a turn base stealth tactical game. That is almost like Xcom money or even half xcom money. This game had 0 shot at every selling > 500k units.

Even if it was projection based numbers it seems highly unrealistic. The only thing I can think of is they are counting the buying of Hairbrain and the entire running cost of the studio in with the projected sales titles.

Two games in the same genre would be Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden and the follow up Miasma Chronicles. Mutant was a hit with estimated 17 million gross and >600k copies sold. Miasma didnt come close to those numbers. Like estimated <150k sold.

To project anything >150k for a game in this genre doesnt make sense at all. We are talking <7 million $$ gross with realistic projections. And I dont see a 15 million project budget for development. Completely original IP in Unity does not = 15 million. Maybe if the buying the studio was factored into it and anything residual from Battletech etc.

 

[lycurgus]

A long time ago I bought a game called Civilization, by Sid Meier. It was hugely ambitious and reeked of quality - I think the manual had a bibliography. Paradox went a step further with games featuring all sorts of interesting historical trinkets, but that created a plausible world in that context. EU1 and HoI1 were astonishing. Along came HoI2 and EU2, both clear improvements and both shining brightly with the original Paradox passion. Along the way there was Victoria which to my mind is/was the greatest strongly historical game ever.

So far, so good.

Sadly though there's been a decline, and with the perspective of hindsight a very steep one. I've bought almost everything Paradox has produced since EU1, but I don't think that I will be doing so any more.

They need to find a new Sid, or a new Johann.

 

[AngryHitsuji]

paradox's intense investment in marketing over QA has decoupled the quality of their games from their return on investment.

they no longer care about how good the game is, what matters is the marketing hype and pre-orders.

 

[RisKFactoR]

You are making it seem like 8k is a lot. Vic3 was one of the Original Big 4 Pdox in house games. It is dwarfed in daily players by euiv, hoi iv, and ck3. the numbers arent even close.

Vic3 as it stands at this moment is still a failure it is still waiting its big patch and the future is uncertain. IF it doesnt 3x-5x its user base then it is a failure. Even if it stays the same it is still pseudo dead.

I didnt state Vic3 is 100% Dead just that it is possible Dead. Which at this time it is still possible dead.

Saying "Vicky is their Original Big 4 Pdox in house games," is over-exaggerating how "big" a game was.

Vicky was always severely overlooked by the Paradox gaming community. Putting Vicky on the same footing as Europa Universalis and HOI would be like someone putting hockey on the same footing as baseball and American football in the USA.

I'm not asying that Victoria wasn't successful in the past. It most certainly was, just like the game of hockey is successful. It's just not on the same level as EU and HOI or even CK. And now Stellaris has easily overtaken it. But that was to be expected. Stellaris is easily the greatest 4X space empire strategy game ever created. Just as EU is the greatest grand strategy game ever created.

The problem you have.....the problem we ALL have...is that we've been spoiled. We got EU4. That's a ridiculously difficult act to follow. Especially now, more than a decade later with all the DLC and all the modders that have shown it a lot of love over the years, it is a truly complete, fully fleshed out game. People are expecting a brand-new title to come right off the shelf as grand and as complete as EU4 is now after that decade of constant updates and development.

Unfortunately, that's not how that works. The bar has been set extraordinarily high. Impossibly high. The ambitions for "The Greatest Game Ever!" necessarily means an extremely complex engine and coding with a crap load of various different moving and working parts. And with an AI that needs to somehow be able to work with it all and provide the single-player with some sort of a challenge.

The bigger and more complex the system, the more unpredictable it becomes. (I'm pretty sure that's a Star Trek quote.) The more bugs there will be. The more time and effort that gets poured into the development cycle. More time and effort, means greater expense. Greater expense means a more constrained time frame to release the game. So you wind up with a double-whammy:

A complex program with a large budget that should take a really long time to build. And because the budget is much higher, the more time-sensitive it becomes to release SOMETHING due to needing to pay the bills and the employees.

If there is one suggestion I might make to Paradox, it's this:

Go back to your origins. Back before the days of Steam, social media, and instant gratification. Paradox is trying to "keep up with the joneses" by maintaining a constant online presence. In other words:

STOP! MAKING! ANNOUNCEMENTS!

Quit blowing yourselves up with all this talk and all these DDs! I get you get a lot of positive feedback with all these weekly DDs. But you're hyping the games up into overdrive. You are overheating yourselves, and your fan base's expectations are ridiculously though the roof. They are becoming more and more impatient. Every time you make an announcement, the instant gratification crowd wants it....not now, but YESTERDAY! They are far too demanding, and far too unrealistic.

So.

PDX has GOT to pull back on the number of people working on their games. Cut back some on the budget. Cut back on the hype and the push. Cutting the budget means they could increase the amount of time their programmers, artists, and historians have in creating a superior product. Stop pressuring the workforce with impossible time constraints. Stop hyping themselves up publicly. The pressure is at an insane level. Go back to the origins, and work slower. More methodically and purposefully. Reign in that marketing team some!

paradox's intense investment in marketing over QA has decoupled the quality of their games from their return on investment.

they no longer care about how good the game is, what matters is the marketing hype and pre-orders.

YES! Exactly! I hadnt read this entire thread yet, until after I had made this long-winded post above this quote!

You are spot-on! The marketing team is being WAY too aggressive! Ya know...

I just got back into retail recently, after driving a truck for the past 6 years, and working in the oil field for 8 years before that. I was in retail (working for Dick's Sporting Goods) back in the early 2000s when I was a teenager and into my early 20s. I'm now working at a Lowe's as a receiving department manager.

I had to go through this crazy week-long training session of 8 hours a day. Video after video after video! It wasnt even really any sort of "training" that pertained to anything that had to do with my job. It was all these stupid acronyms, like "SMART" and "CARE" and "LILAC" and god know how many other idiotic childish acrronyms. It all pertained to Loss Prevention and Customer Service.

Intermixed with all the acronyms, was this constant barrage of pro-Lowe's propaganda. Intermixed with all the propaganda and acronyms, were.... ALL THE CREDIT CARDS!

Holy! Crap! Lowe's has 4......FOUR! Different types of cards! FOUR cards, just for one retail store!

And each one of the cards has 4 different tier levels! Like. The MVP Pro Rewards Program has Bronze Key, Silver Key, Gold Key, and Platinum Key with stereotypical (mostly worthless) increasing benefits. Like "an additional 5% off." Like. Whoopdty-freaking-Doo! A whole 5% off your purchase! Gimme a breeak!

Meanwhile, they have "Pro Desk" people who's sole job it is is to sell, sell, sell! The pressure on them to sell is ridiculous. Each week, they are expected to sell $90,000 worth of stuff. They're paying these people $16/hour, plus a "bonus" of a few hundred extra dollars every fourth month IF they hit something crazy like $1.5 million worth of stuff.

Meanwhile, they have 2 fulfillment guys who are expected to drive powered equipment (forlifts, reach trucks) to keep up with what the pro people are selling while also trying to take care of normal customers on the floor. They're only paying those guys $14/hour with no opportunities for any sort of bonus!

So they have Pro Desk people selling all the stuff, making better money than the people moving the stuff they sell!

Well. Selling stuff is great and all, but it means jack if you can't MOVE it! They're business model is all backwards!

That is what's happening here with all of these game developers. They have these "young" and "hip" marketing people fresh out of college with zero real-world experience, hyping up a product that hasn't even been developed yet! Utilizing social media (that already overly exaggerates everything and promotes instant gratification). Further, with the "pro-ordering" BS. Hyping up a product that's putting more pressure on the company as a whole to push something out. So the company in turn, pressures the people actually CREATING the product to hurry it along.

Now you have two major problems:

1) Really high impossible expectations from a crowd of impatient Gen-Zers who were only little children when EU4 was first made. (Which means that EU4 has had time to mature into all the content it has today!) who all pre-ordered a product that isn't even in the Alpha stage of development!

2) Extreme time constraints and pressure getting the product to the customers that are expecting delivery of something they have already been sold on and paid for!

 

[InvisibleBison]

Cutting the budget means they could increase the amount of time their programmers, artists, and historians have in creating a superior product.

How exactly does cutting the budget allow for people to spend more time working on a project? If the budget is being cut, doesn't that mean there is less money to pay people with?

That is what's happening here with all of these game developers. They have these "young" and "hip" marketing people fresh out of college with zero real-world experience, hyping up a product that hasn't even been developed yet!

When has Paradox hyped up a product that hasn't been developed yet?

 

[RisKFactoR]

How exactly does cutting the budget allow for people to spend more time working on a project? If the budget is being cut, doesn't that mean there is less money to pay people with?


When has Paradox hyped up a product that hasn't been developed yet?

I should have expanded on that a bit. Or stated my argument better.

When I mentioned "cutting the budget," I mean maybe have smaller teams. (I have no idea how large PDX teams are for their projects, so I'm just speculating here.) I was thinking along the lines of making the teams smaller and perhaps more "intimate" with closer working relations with each other.

A smaller budget means less need to rush a product to market. You can extend the development out a bit longer. It'll be about the same number of total manhours, but it would most likely feel less rushed to the development and artistic teams. I'll admit if I'm incorrect on my assumption.

As for your second question, PDX has been really hyping up their products since about the mid 2010s. Especially with Cities skylines, and even more especially CS 2. But admittedly, the hype is probably more from Colossal Order than from PDX.

 

[elektrizikekswerk]

A smaller budget means less need to rush a product to market. You can extend the development out a bit longer. It'll be about the same number of total manhours, but it would most likely feel less rushed [...]

If you have a smaller budget you generally also have less man hours available as you either have a shorter time or less people. I don't see how you come the conclusion that smaller budget means _more_ time. Quite the contrary (if the team size stays the same).

If you have 20m € you can pay ~200 people for one year. Assuming one person costs 100k p.a...
If you have only 10m € you can pay 200 people for only half a year...
Or you fire 100 people so you are still at one year - but still with half the manhours.

Unless you somehow convince the people to work for less

 

[RisKFactoR]

If you have a smaller budget you generally also have less man hours available as you either have a shorter time or less people. I don't see how you come the conclusion that smaller budget means _more_ time. Quite the contrary (if the team size stays the same).

If you have 20m € you can pay ~200 people for one year. Assuming one person costs 100k p.a...
If you have only 10m € you can pay 200 people for only half a year...
Or you fire 100 people so you are still at one year - but still with half the manhours.

Unless you somehow convince the people to work for less

Part One:

If you cut the budget, That means the company is "bleeding less."

I was imagining cutting the staff by a quarter. But for argument's sake, lets say by as much as half. You cut the number of people working on a game by half, the company is spending half the money over the course of every single month the game is under development.

(I'm American, and it's beyond me how to use the Euro symbol on my keyboard, so I'm going to use the $ sign here)

If you have $20 million in a project's total budget before the company has to put SOMETHING onto the market to begin earning some revenue....

Over the course of one year with 200 people making $100,000 a product would need to hit the market at the end of the 12th month.

If you cut the number of staff by half, to 100 people and they are making $100,000 / year, that extends the timeline out to TWO years instead of one before hitting that $20 million benchmark when the company has to start making a revenue stream off that project.

computer games, engines, and all computer programs in general are becoming more and more complex. With more and more features and "working parts." Particularly with games' AI that has to be able to function with all those extra moving parts in order to provide the single player with some sort of challenge.

With increased complexity, necessarily comes a LOT more code. More code, means more potential for more bugs and/or broken game play mechanics. This is actually why I SUPPORT the concept of DLC. I understand and appreciate the fact that a basic functional game needs to come to market. That more features can always be added later on, which gives the company the opportunity to make more income so they can continue to provide the great products I enjoy.

I personally prefer a basic vanilla gaming experience that works "out of the box," and I am patient enough to wait longer to allow the developers to work more methodically as opposed to haphazardly under increasingly impossible time constraints. That's how we end up with disasters like Cities Skylines: II. (Not a complete "disaster" in my book, but this post is already too long to delve deeper in that and I have a bit more to say.)

Part Two:

There is an optimum number of people for peak efficiency for working on any given project. Beyond that, adding more people nets diminishing returns on the investment into more staff.

If a project is bleeding cash, there is a corporate tendency where "panic" begins to ensue. I'm going to again pick on CS 2 here.

When the corporate structure begins to "panic," they begin to put more and more pressure on those below them to hurry up and put something out. The "panicking" can bleed into other departments unrelated to the actual development teams. Such as the sales department. Sales will begin to want to....well....make sales!

When Sales wants to start pushing, that department in turn starts to turn up the pressure on the Marketing department. So Marketing starts turning up the hype. When Marketing starts hyping something, it generates an ADHD atmosphere for the future customer base who increasingly want something NOW! And if there are any delays, they start getting irritated and angry and begin leaving ugly reviews online. Which in turn, increases corporate "panic" at the top even more.

Reading one of the "famous" past reactions by Marina Sakienen over at CO that the drama kings and queens of the media world heavily criticized her for kind of "lashing out" at the "toxic" customers, is a demonstration of this.

I don't blame Marina. She's human and has every reason to be frustrated. She's probably under pressure from the corporate structure that appears to be in panic-mode, and under pressure by the angry consumer base who spent money on a product that had some glaring bugs. (At least it wasn't EA's Sim City 5...... *rolleyes*)

Part Three:

Remember, these are just hypotheses. I don't know what's happening behind the scenes at PDX. Most PDX products are perfectly fine. Stellaris and its DLC was a stunning success, as it deserved to be. CK III and Vicky III were good, with their later updates and DLC making them even better. EU IV is by far the greatest piece of work by PDX (IMHO, of course. There is literally no need for a successor title, and hope to see continued development for a long time to come).

CS 2 was probably the worst (I know it was developed by CO, but PDX had a hand in marketing and pressuring the product as well.) Based on what I've seen from CS2's marketing and advertising, it comes off as being overhyped almost to the point of being panic-driven.

Now, IF PDX DOES plan on making an EU V, it's gotta have a REALLY long development cycle. EU IV would be an extremely difficult act to follow. And this is where my entire point in "Part One" is derived from. EU IV comes from a place of absolute love. You could almost FEEL it with how well the game plays, the deep layers, all the different details from all the different DLC even focusing on various cultural clothing sets! The music packs! The different sprites! The dedication to squashing bugs and improving the AI.

Creative types like coders and artists can't be pressured. It's got to come from a place of love. And love is patient, as they say.