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

[goodcigar]

My friend's account was banned for literally YEARS for a completely bogus reason and denied any appeal. The real reason was probably he was too critical. This is a person who has given Paradox probably $1000-$2000. Many people over the last couple years have posted about ridiculous bans on the Paradox subreddits. It's not an outlier it's a common occurrence. Paradox in general has an attitude problem towards its customers who give you their hard earned money.

Americans don't live in a utopian social democracy like Sweden. Most of your customers probably are American and probably live paycheck to paycheck. As for feedback, there should be a community team that collects it and organizes it for the development teams.

 

[gigau]

There were rumors about game in some fantasy setting, so maybe they are busy at forging armored braces

I thought it was more than rumours... Paradox has posted job ofters a few weeks back for graphists for a Fantasy game.

 

[Maria Theresa]

First, and I think this has been raised by everyone who made that point before: we welcome feedback and people being critical of your games, business, and/or actions. I don't believe we've ever silenced, banned, or stopped working with someone because they were critical of us.

Lol. Key phrase being "i don't believe". Just because you don't believe in something doesnt make it not exist. You (As in "Paradox") have blacklisted content creators/streamers simply for being critical of some game/dlc. (RepublicOfPlay/Darren for example) Also it is funny that "Respectfully disagree" cant be used on your post(Well, technically it can be "used" but it doesnt show up under it). (That being said the entire "Disagree" button is pointless and doesn't really add anything to the forums and should be removed. I'm simply pointing out that selectively turning it off on some posts is super cringe.)

 

[Uniform764]

• I know what matters first and foremost is for Paradox to fix and improve on the things you've escalated and have created frustration in the community. The main reason the actual devs have not been super active here themselves (and you're therefore stuck with me) is that they're actively working on the next hotfix.

My issue is that we got an apology from Johan about the debacle that was 1.30.5 patch and 70 days later (I know because I necro'd the thread to be snarky) you released the Leviathan patch.

Mistakes happen and can be forgiven. The problem is that Paradox are continually doing the same thing which they know infuriates the playerbase and there doesn't seem to be any explanation as to why you're struggling to learn from experience.

 

[awmobile367]

Mistakes happen and can be forgiven. The problem is that Paradox are continually doing the same thing which they know infuriates the playerbase and there doesn't seem to be any explanation as to why you're struggling to learn from experience.

Precisely they only ever offer empty fluff apologies devoid of real gestures to show they're listening.

 

[Revshawn]

You sure did, and yet you said nothing.

That's so terrible. Rude as hell.

Anyway @Konbendth, I've read your posts and you bring up a lot of good points. But the biggest problem with Paradox right now is they've lost a lot of what made the old games special and you stopped doing community polls that let people have their say about what they want from Paradox. I don't know how to fix it because I'm not in the office and I don't see the conversations and the development decisions that happen behind closed doors. I don't know the ins and outs of the corporate structure. But being a fan of Paradox for over 15 years now, I've seen the transition the company has made from "Let's do what the fans want." to "Let's do what we want and the fans...eh...they'll get used to it."

That's part of what made Paradox so lovable in the past. People are going to say rude things either way, but there are things you can do as a company to make things better. Ya'll just ain't doing it. And I don't know who you need to shake down to get that changed, but it would be very helpful if you reopened the dialogue between the players and the company and let us tell you how badly we want Victoria 3.

 

[awmobile367]

A bit of context on how it used to be on the forums.

I remember getting rather angry on the forums a decade or more ago while seeking help with a crash problem. Instead of being given a warning or a ban I was calmly spoken to and told that what was happening was that I had modified something in the game files incorrectly. And then I got help on how to fix what I had screwed up thus salvaging the save game I had been playing. That sort of thing doesn't happen nowadays, any hint of anger and you get the hammer.

 

[Keizer Harm]

Why is the forum being designated as an acceptable anger outlet? The forum is not your therapist. I think if you are being rude and someone helps you in spite of that, that is a rather kind person. It is not in the job description of devs to be unusually kind so I see no reason they should be responding to threads that are just anger. If you have points or feelings, you can still discuss them in a civilised manner.

"This update gave me great frustration" > "THIS UPDATE WAS THROWN TOGETHER WITHOUT THE SLIGHTEST COMMON SENSE"

 

[awmobile367]

And then the fanboys without a clue arrive and attack me for trying to provide an example of a positive interaction from the history of the forums.

Edit: If you retaliate you get the hammer, but if you report the mods can't or won't do anything.

 

[KayVee]

I've followed these two situations pretty closely and I have evaluated the evidence from both sides, and while it's impossible to know for sure, in my view, the preponderance of evidence seems to suggest it was the criticism that got them canned. As a player of Paradox games, that's just how it looks to me. I've also heard from sources I consider reliable that YouTubers who cover Paradox games will warn each other to not cover things that are negative. When I watch a lot of the Paradox YouTubers who do get access, to be totally honest, that does indeed seem to be the case. Take Leviathan, for instance: massive upset on the forums, but YouTubers who got access were completely quiet prior to launch. Isn't that weird?

Look at the embargo agreements that are put out. Why would Paradox ban a streamer from sharing their opinion, if not to control the message? I know this sounds like an accusation and I really don't mean it that way - this is just how I feel and what I think and would like to have a line of communication about this. I would love to hear Paradox's side of this but when everything is shrouded in secrecy it's kinda hard to give Paradox the benefit of the doubt.

Spiffing Brit's video showed off how unbalanced NA natives are and his game crashed... lol That was pretty honest imo even though I haven't personally experienced anything but very minor placeholder_text stuff.

 

[Bovrick]

I understood you fine, but I think "broadly" or "generally" could be what you're looking for

Yeah it translates pretty well, especially if you've ever studied logic/maths.

 

[konbendith]

Will try provide some broad answers to some of the points above, bring some perspective and manage some expectations:

- I know and see that a lot of people are often asking about the 'why' something went wrong, and I want to be very clear and manage expectations there: we probably won't tell you that. The reason is, why something went wrong often boils down to who made a decision, and we're not going to play the blame game. Our culture is that when we fail, it's as an organization, we fail and fix things together. We don't point fingers. Not saying we'll never provide public explanations on anything, we sometimes do, when it make sense. But if what you're hoping for is someone or something to blame, it's unlikely that you'll ever get it.

- We often refer to how much we've grown on the past few years, it's also true for the community. Nowadays, more than 5 millions of players play our games every month. I've just checked and it's almost 10 times more than only 4 years ago. Whether we want it or not, this kind of scaling up does impact a bit how we can interact with the community. If there are ten times more of you, there is still only one game director for your favorite game. So the likeliness that they have as much time for everyone as they did 5 years ago is pretty slim. So, to some extent, yup, the good old days are gone. Doesn't mean we want to go the whole other way around and become the kind of company where the devs only talk to the players once a year in a super PR controlled interview, quite the contrary. We still support and encourage all our teams to interact directly with the players, that's why we have our live streams, pdxcon, and these forums (and the reasons for the intended changes I've described above). It won't allow us to magically bring back the Paradox from the 'good old days', but it still makes us one of the company of our size that is the most open and transparent with their players. And that's what we want to be.

- Bringing back the question of toxicity, I want to say again that I don't believe toxicity is strictly summarized by people going as far as harassment or personal attacks. I'd say that if you reached the point where you've crossed that line, you're probably already miles ahead of the limit that made you contribute to a toxic environment. As I pointed earlier, it's not easy to define where that exact line in the sand is drawn, because we do know conversations gets heated, that some people talk from the heart, get passionate about what they care about. And it's not about labeling someone as 'toxic' or 'not-toxic', we can all end up contributing to a toxic environment at one point or another. As someone who's worked with community for almost a decade now, I strongly believe moderation is not about judging the individuals, but about defining which behaviors are OK, and contribute to a positive environment, and which behaviors are not. And a behavior is not necessarily a specific action or infraction to a rule, it extends to tone, attitude, intention, etc. We often get stuck in judging the individual, and trying to define if they have broken any set rule, instead of thinking "OK, is this kind of behavior contribute to the environment we want to build? If no, how do we correct it?". This is very much theory-of-communities-in-an-online-environment-welcome-to-my-ted-talk but I hope you see the point I'm trying to make. When I say we want to explore adjusting the moderation, it's not about making it harsher or more lenient, turning it into another platform or going back to the good old days, it's mainly about challenging a bit how we're approaching it.

 

[Jia Xu]

When you release a paid expansion and that expansion makes the game significantly worse in all kinds of ways, you should expect to take a little bit of a roasting. No one is immune to humour. If the devs can't take people cracking jokes at their expensive, then they're kind of toxic too. If you are in a leadership position and you want to keep telling people that they want digital board games while they're actually asking for plausible alt-history strategy games, then some jokes are inevitably going to be made at your expense. Such is life.

With that said, I've seen a lot of people take it beyond a joke and make things really personal. These users really are toxic. You don't need to make personal attacks on individual developers. Paradox developers are just as human as anyone else. Mistakes get made. Mistakes get fixed. Life goes on. Don't like what an expansion has to offer? Don't buy it. If you don't buy it, I won't tell on you. It will be our secret. Downvote the game on Steam. Don't buy it. The people at Paradox who follow the numbers will get the message without you throwing a really hateful tantrum on the forums. Be respectful.

What's confusing here is the idea in this article that the developers are only just ignoring the forums now. It's like, a lot of the frustration comes from long, long periods of silence. Example: Outside of diaries (which are a planned, fixed marketing thing, and completely inorganic), there have hardly been any developer posts on the CK3 board since launch. The developers were already not communicating with us for the most part. I remember blackninja showing up a few times but outside of that? Silence. There was that long period from Christmas to like March where we didn't even have the diaries. So, it's like, we need a new Paradox guy who is specifically in charge of making threats because this one isn't very good (that's a joke).

 

[SPAMbuca]

Reading between the lines it reads like management made the call but Tinto didn't protest enough to warrant postponement. No need for confirmation on it, but that would fit the story above.

I get you don't want to share such internal information as it would be hurtful to an individual and it wouldn't help us to move forward, but could you perhaps share what kind of steps are considered to prevent disasters like these from happening again? doing so would be possible without blaming anyone.

For example:
- We are considering to bring in more senior developers for more expertise
- We bring in more manpower to be able to fix tech debt and bugs
- We will accept longer development time to polish, test and squash bugs
- We will work on a new release protocol that will make it easier to postpone launches if the product simply is not ready


Regarding toxic behaviour; I think there's a clear line between personal attacks and people being disappointed. I think nearly everyone here agrees on that and accepts sanctions if that happens. However, I don't think it's possible to ban all snarky, cynic or sarcastic statements. This is still the internet and people are... more critical than ever before. I personally definately don't think it's needed to display any such behaviour as it won't help to get your message across, but if tone is an issue in situations like these, I would definately consider to use communication through experts instead of developers that don't appreciate it as handling it is not part of the job description.

Continuing this discussion of what is toxic behaviour isn't doing any good. It's a discussion neither side is going to win while clear communication on how to move forward will cool things down instead of escalate things further.

This could be read as "we think a larger part of the community is toxic" which is sadly different from yesterday where you said only people that make personal attacks are toxic.

 

[Keizer Harm]

I don't think anyone is going to ban snarky comments, but I think developers have no moral obligation to read them. Then, if you want to use the forums to expel your anger, you can do that but your words will not be listened to. Game devs are not your therapists. Constructive points can be made in a rational manner. I have seen a couple EU4 dev posts thanking users of a thread that they managed to be constructive for once and it was absurd.

 

[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!

 

[SPAMbuca]

I get that. I used my own personal situation as reference as well. You're of course free to work on the ideal workplace/forum. In fact, I would encourage it. I just don't think delving much deeper into it will net you the result you want. Also don't worry, I'm not here to blame 1 particular person or ask for resignations.

I myself used to work as a callcenter agent back as a student. At the moment I'm lower management at said callcenter company working for a very big client outside the game industry. I'm mentioning this as I'm used to vocal and written toxic behaviour back when I made calls myself and I have to deal with on a daily basis as my co workers have to deal with it. This is not to be made a contest on who has the worst customers, but from experience customer service generally doesn't speak out openly against behaviour of customers that are either rightfully or wrongly voicing their anger. I'm 100% for protecting your co workers, although I do think marketing experts should be less sensitive to such anger and irrational reactions.

I hope you'll find a way for the general community here or on the internet to be more civil towards another. I'm just skeptical based on my own experience.

By the way: we apologise for mistakes made by the client company or ourselves all the time. Never hurts their share prices and generally our conversations go a lot smoother if we either acknowledge mistakes or emotions.

 

[Jia Xu]

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!

I am definitely sympathetic and you guys definitely put up with an extraordinary amount of abuse. However, your expectations might be a little naive. With Paradox being a company from northern Europe, I sometimes wonder if people there forget that they have a very international community. How many of you have actually met Americans? I'm from Newfoundland. If two people bump into each other here, both apologize to each other, no matter who is at fault. If you have a dispute with a vendor, you resolve it in a quiet and dignified manner. If you were to throw a tantrum at a vendor, the assumption would be some kind of mental health issue. That's our culture. Americans have their own culture. In America, consumers are a form of deity. If there is a grievance with a vendor, managers are expected to come out in rags on their hands and knees and beg for forgiveness while the consumers scream, wave their arms, and issue threats.

What makes it a little naive is that your company wants those big American dollars but also doesn't want to deal with Americans being Americans. A large amount of them are always going to fight you, no matter how reasonable your requests are. You can't expect them to become completely different people just for you. That's silly. I don't mean to generalize too much here, either. Americans are diverse as anyone else and I'm sure plenty of them are nice. But many of them are not! When building expectations you have to weigh them against reality. You should keep pushing for more mutual-respect and calm discussions but you also need to keep your goals realistic and grounded. The community will always be toxic to a somewhat large extent.

 

[steveh11]

I actually feel a little guilty, because I've not been actively participating on the forums for a while - even reading them less frequently. I'd like to think I was part of the 'quiet majority' who are (usually) polite, respectful and genuinely trying to maintain a relationship and dialogue with the developers of the games I play so much, and to read of such a change of atmosphere here made me quite sad, and not a little shocked.

Note to self: If you don't use it (in the right way) it'll wither and die. I need to spend more time and effort on the forums.

 

[awmobile367]

I am definitely sympathetic and you guys definitely put up with an extraordinary amount of abuse. However, your expectations might be a little naive. With Paradox being a company from northern Europe, I sometimes wonder if people there forget that they have a very international community. How many of you have actually met Americans? I'm from Newfoundland. If two people bump into each other here, both apologize to each other, no matter who is at fault. If you have a dispute with a vendor, you resolve it in a quiet and dignified manner. If you were to throw a tantrum at a vendor, the assumption would be some kind of mental health issue. That's our culture. Americans have their own culture. In America, consumers are a form of deity. If there is a grievance with a vendor, managers are expected to come out in rags on their hands and knees and beg for forgiveness while the consumers scream, wave their arms, and issue threats.

What makes it a little naive is that your company wants those big American dollars but also doesn't want to deal with Americans being Americans. A large amount of them are always going to fight you, no matter how reasonable your requests are. You can't expect them to become completely different people just for you. That's silly. I don't mean to generalize too much here, either. Americans are diverse as anyone else and I'm sure plenty of them are nice. But many of them are not! When building expectations you have to weigh them against reality. You should keep pushing for more mutual-respect and calm discussions but you also need to keep your goals realistic and grounded. The community will always be toxic to a somewhat large extent.

To an extent this is true, but I've been one of the "tried the calm and respectful approach" and it didn't go well.