PCGamer article: "Paradox Interactive says player toxicity is driving developers away from its forums"

[konbendith]

I would advise you to not try and read between the lines because you'll always end up missing the facts and speculating on baseless assumptions. I understand it might be frustrating to not get as many details and information as you'd like and to not be able to know the exact details of what went right or wrong. But as I said above, it is how it is, and to some extent, you'll have to accept that some questions won't always get answers. I'm however sure that Tinto and the EU4 team will eventually share more info on their plans moving forward. Also, just on a general note, I know the narrative of big evil corporate overlord vs. poor innocent creative studio is very compelling but take from someone who's worked in this industry for a decade, the world is never this black & white.

Also, I've said that people who resorted to personal attacks were definitely showcasing toxic behavior, I didn't say that only this kind of behavior was toxic. That's actually pretty much the opposite of what I've been saying all along, so please don't twist my words. I've also not said our intention was to start banning every snarky comment on the forum or to police the tone here to an extreme. What I've been saying all along is that there is a balance to be found, between allowing people to express themselves; sometimes with a lot of passion and little filter, while also making sure this is an environment where our devs, and all our teams feel can be welcoming and constructive. I don't have a magical answer of how we find that balance, and we draw the line, yet. That's very much what we're intending to work on in the upcoming weeks/months.

Also, just to be clear, arguments like "just don't read the negative content", "this is how the internet is", or "trying to define toxicity will only anger fans more" aren't strong points to me. This is our platform, we own it and are free to define how we want to administrate and moderate it. I'm not discussing here to win an argument or getting everyone to agree with me, I'm bringing you some perspective on what I hope to achieve with our forums, and this community, and how I hope me and my team can help improve things here. At the end of the day, probably some people will end up disagreeing with the route we take, and that's fine, there is no such thing as pleasing everyone!

 

[konbendith]

Since Konbedith has been mentioning discussions with the devs about their presence on the forum: one of the great things on the forums is how it's clear where official staff have posted a comment, and how you can filter a thread specifically to read those. It makes it very clear that devs interact with the players, which is a thing I really like. But those people don't comment on everything, obviously, which makes their interaction with the fanbase on the forum largely invisible. If they read a thread, and don't proceed with a comment, the poster of the thread is left in the shadows, they can't know if they contributed or not. I specifically have this with bug reports. So has there ever been given thought about adding an indication if a dev read the first post of a thread?

Good suggestion! I actually like the idea of having some sort of "seen" feature for suggestions and bug reports maybe. One of our focus for developing the forum (in the collaboration with our Player Services team in charge of the platform) is to ensure we make them better at what they do, rather than trying to make the platform good at everything. I think that's suggestion from that perspective!

 

[Triumph Jordi]

Wait, blue posts show agree reacts but not disagree? What fresh kind of nonsense is this?

Post only show the top 3 reactions, in the post Maria Theresa is talking about the Agrees, Likes & Informative outweigh the angry and respectfully disagrees so they don't appear. That's a global forum setting and not dependent on the user or thread.

 

[DebbieElla]

Reminder: critiquing Paradox products is fine, and not toxic. Calling our devs names or sending them death threats is toxic and will get you banned. We have rules in place to make the forum fun and informative for everyone, and reserve the right to enforce those rules.