Will Paradox consider streamlining their DLC business model for future games?

[Had a dad]

That could be a solution after a while, but especially with expansions I think it would be a bad idea. Music and graphics grouped after a while could be a good idea, though without a discount those groups will be expensive and people might not buy them for it. 2€ for a music of graphics DLC is nothing (it is the price of a discounted bag of chips after all), whereas a graphics/music group at 30€ is more likely to make you not buy it as a new user.

I just meant as a way to sort stuff on Steam. One of the times I was buying some CK2 stuff as I had not played it in quite some time, I missed one of the Expansion style DLC's and didn't realize it till the icons for our swag came out, as there was a code I didn't have.

 

[TheAtreides84]

I know for a fact that i'm put off buying by a long list of DLCs on Steam. I don't pretend it to be a rational thing - I know some DLCs can be cosmetic or inessential - it's just the feeling that you're buying an incomplete product.

 

[dvandyke]

I’m a fortunate guy, no commitments and plenty of disposable income so I put up with it and buy it all.
Unfortunately DLC spam prevents my friends, who are not so lucky from touching paradox products entirely.
Most people not prepared to pay hundreds of pounds to keep up to date and have a full version of the game.

 

[Me_]

Do people feel this is a problem that we need to fix - or Steam? I mean sure we can go about creating smart ways of presenting dozens of DLC - but ultimately it's a presentation issue on Steams end.

/shams

It's just my opinion, but I think that, as long as it potentially hurts you, it is your problem. If If a truck drivers falls asleep at the wheel and crashes into someone's house it's not just the driver's problem, the house's owner is still having a truck-shaped hole in a wall.

 

[Wagonlitz]

I just meant as a way to sort stuff on Steam. One of the times I was buying some CK2 stuff as I had not played it in quite some time, I missed one of the Expansion style DLC's and didn't realize it till the icons for our swag came out, as there was a code I didn't have.

You didn't notice a hole in the expansion icon wall in the starting screen?

 

[DanJonMin]

Season passes sound like a great idea.

Would people prefer a subscription. Just sign up and don't be bothered with the hassle of having to manually buy each DLC - for those that know they'll be getting every single one? subscribing might give you a discount or other special bonus?

/shams

Late to the party, but my two cents is that a Season Pass would be a lot more effective than a recurring subscription. If you offer someone something for an upfront lump sum, once they've bought it it's a sunk cost, so every time they get a DLC people get a little bit happier. If you make it a subscription you run in to the MMO problems, plus of course the first thing you'll learn when you open a behavioural economics book is that people would rather pay £60 once than £5 twelve times!

Of course a Season Pass gives you a perverse incentive to produce substandard DLC, or stop producing at all once you've fulfilled what you promise! How much do you trust yourselves!? Personally I'd be willing to take the dive and see how it goes. If it works then it would certainly be my preferred method of purchase.

My personal willingness to pay would probably be at £60/€80/$90, or £100/€130/$150 for a game and pass. Any more and I'd probably revert to 1-2 at full price and the rest at 75% off on sale.

 

[Phibs]

Point (or at least one of them) was not turning new-comers away though.

Season-passes have such a bad rep as to achieve the exact opposite.

 

[DanJonMin]

Point (or at least one of them) was not turning new-comers away though.

Season-passes have such a bad rep as to achieve the exact opposite.

I'm not sure a subscription is going to convince newcomers either. I'm also not entirely sure how it's going to work - do you 'rent' the content for the duration, or do you sub for one month and get everything already released?

I would suggest that a season pass would be just as effective for a game like CK2 which is a couple of years old as it would for a brand new release. Pay once, get the entire backlog plus everything unreleased. PDX can always increase the price for later adopters if they extend a game's life cycle.

After that, I guess 3 smaller separate season passes might be easier - 'Expansions', 'Cosmetics' and 'Music' .

Alternatively, just roll all the DLC for older games up to a certain point in to a purchase of the base game. For CK2 say all DLC pre-TOG. A la World of Warcraft and their new Xpack.

 

[Chromos]

In my opinion the wall of DLC's is not that good.
It starts to be "work" to just dig through the list and decide if you want this or that.
Some may buy then anything to just be sure/on the safe side. But if the price is important, it is not helpfull to dig through such a long list.

Maybe it could help if you do a different sorting on your own webshop for testing?

 

[Phibs]

I'm not sure a subscription is going to convince newcomers either. I'm also not entirely sure how it's going to work - do you 'rent' the content for the duration, or do you sub for one month and get everything already released?

I would suggest that a season pass would be just as effective for a game like CK2 which is a couple of years old as it would for a brand new release. Pay once, get the entire backlog plus everything unreleased. PDX can always increase the price for later adopters if they extend a game's life cycle.

After that, I guess 3 smaller separate season passes might be easier - 'Expansions', 'Cosmetics' and 'Music' .

Alternatively, just roll all the DLC for older games up to a certain point in to a purchase of the base game. For CK2 say all DLC pre-TOG. A la World of Warcraft and their new Xpack.

When I said subscription I was personally more thinking about a commitment to purchase. Sort of an auto-buy thingy.

Monthly subscription makes zero sense imo.

I like your last suggestion. Similar to one I made earlier.

 

[Wagonlitz]

I'm not sure a subscription is going to convince newcomers either. I'm also not entirely sure how it's going to work - do you 'rent' the content for the duration, or do you sub for one month and get everything already released?

I would suggest that a season pass would be just as effective for a game like CK2 which is a couple of years old as it would for a brand new release. Pay once, get the entire backlog plus everything unreleased. PDX can always increase the price for later adopters if they extend a game's life cycle.

After that, I guess 3 smaller separate season passes might be easier - 'Expansions', 'Cosmetics' and 'Music' .

Alternatively, just roll all the DLC for older games up to a certain point in to a purchase of the base game. For CK2 say all DLC pre-TOG. A la World of Warcraft and their new Xpack.

The games shouldn't just be rented. And it would be bad to sell the game + all existing/future DLC in one go, since then you at some time would end up with development stopping because there isn't enough money anymore, even though there would have been if people still had to buy DLC individually.

When I said subscription I was personally more thinking about a commitment to purchase. Sort of an auto-buy thingy.

Monthly subscription makes zero sense imo.

I like your last suggestion. Similar to one I made earlier.

Indeed. It should be that you automatically buy released DLC; not that you pay something a month.

 

[DanJonMin]

The games shouldn't just be rented. And it would be bad to sell the game + all existing/future DLC in one go, since then you at some time would end up with development stopping because there isn't enough money anymore, even though there would have been if people still had to buy DLC individually.

Indeed. It should be that you automatically buy released DLC; not that you pay something a month.

And herein lies the problem! I would personally hate the idea of an 'auto-buy' subscription. There's no spending limit to it and it means you end up paying full price for every face pack and eBook. They'd need to add pretty substantial incentives to make me prefer an auto-buy to just sifting through the list. It also doesn't benefit new players at all as if you're starting with a blank slate it fulfills the same function as the 'Buy All' button.

As you rightly identify, for a season pass to work beyond the initial forecasted life of the game, you'd need to either increase the price or sell a 1-year season pass, which is essentially what they do already with their various collections.

Whatever happens, someone's going to end up bearing some sort of risk. I would suggest that given we're talking about expanding Paradox's player base that it shouldn't be the buyer.

 

[Phibs]

And herein lies the problem! I would personally hate the idea of an 'auto-buy' subscription. There's no spending limit to it and it means you end up paying full price for every face pack and eBook. They'd need to add pretty substantial incentives to make me prefer an auto-buy to just sifting through the list. It also doesn't benefit new players at all as if you're starting with a blank slate it fulfills the same function as the 'Buy All' button.

I guess eBooks should be seperated out of any new comprehensive dlc-purchasing construct, since they're not really game-dlc.
The spending-limit is not really an argument unless you fear this would lead to a drastic increase in dlc release and price. And of course it would need to be incentivised.

For new players and old dlc I point to my earlier suggestion:

Spoiler

As a newcomer, yeah that'd put me off.

Dlc that has been on sale a couple of times (usually coinciding the release of new dlc) could have the standard price permanently lowered in a bundle on steam.
Dlc-cycle/tier/season-bundles.
Just a suggestion. *shrug*

Which personally is the only idea I would as of yet sort of like.

I'm adverse to season passes because customers have oftentimes been burned by these in the past and I'd be hard-pressed to think of an instance where it worked out great.
I'm also not a fan of subscriptions, but to my mind an mmo-type subscription is the least sensible version.

 

[ThereItsDone]

This is not about people who are certain to buy all the DLCs or even regular fans of paradox that follow the news, read the DDs and so on. They will buy DLCs no matter what, a season pass (don't do subscriptions for a mainly solo game, ever, it's a terrible idea), might enable you to squeeze a bit more from this target audience, but it's not really relevant IMO.

It's about the new customers that hear about the games two year laters (or old customers that returns to the game after two years)

And they see this :

This would put off anyone from buying any game. The DLC list is larger than the game description ...


This is just telling people "you're not actually buying the full game for 40€, the full game will actually cost you 145€"

Also even though there are sales quite often, the price tag of the game or its older DLCs never changed.

This! So much this! The main thing that is infuriating about Paradox flagship titles such as EU IV and CK2 is that they hack up their DLC into pieces and sell them as overpriced microtransactions. It's hard to justify spending 145 € or 1'300 kr on all this stuff. Buying a DLC expansion such as Charlemange or whatnot costs almost as much as the original game to begin with!

This kind of business practice is best described as highly exploitative and will only turn prospective customers away from paradox titles which is insane considering they're experience a rise in popularity. I myself have at best been able to purchase the base game for these titles and I want the DLC but I just can't justify that cost - the prices feels highly unfair and exploitative and I think they should be bundled together, if only as to show how insane the prices really are.

If Paradox would have lowered the prices with as little as 30% and bundled them up, then it would have been far easier for many more customers including myself to buy them and while the price for everything would be 30% less - Paradox might end up with as much as 5x as many customers. Meaning a 3.3x more money!

The only way this business practice makes any sense is if the paradox customer base so so low that they couldn't possibly expect their increased sales to make up for it and I don't believe that: I believe Paradox's customer base is great enough to support a much lower asking price for the DLC. Appealing to this carries so many benefits including higher customer loyalty, more sales, stronger competition resulting in a stronger brand recognition.

 

[Wagonlitz]

You are aware Charlemagne is something like 15€ whereas the base game is around 40€? So it is not almost the same price. And PI has cut out the fluff from expansions and sells it seperately, so that people who don't want it get the expansions cheaper. Also be aware that most of the expansions are really large and some are almost new games themself---they most certainly aren't overpriced. You might make that argument about the graphics packs though, but if the are it isn't much. The music packs most definitely aren't overpriced, since Waldetoft keeps pumping out really really great music.

 

[loup99]

You are aware Charlemagne is something like 15€ whereas the base game is around 40€? So it is not almost the same price. And PI has cut out the fluff from expansions and sells it seperately, so that people who don't want it get the expansions cheaper. Also be aware that most of the expansions are really large and some are almost new games themself---they most certainly aren't overpriced. You might make that argument about the graphics packs though, but if the are it isn't much. The music packs most definitely aren't overpriced, since Waldetoft keeps pumping out really really great music.

Charlemagne (and RoI) were more pricey as they included some of that stuff that you call "fluff".

 

[Mikalos]

ck2 would greatly benefit from it's dlc being merged: and price decreases: it's one thing when we had expansions and DLc cost $200 overall, its diofferent when it outright says it now on steam, its a turn off to buyers to see "if i want the fullll game pay a million$

 

[Mikalos]

You are aware Charlemagne is something like 15€ whereas the base game is around 40€? So it is not almost the same price. And PI has cut out the fluff from expansions and sells it seperately, so that people who don't want it get the expansions cheaper. Also be aware that most of the expansions are really large and some are almost new games themself---they most certainly aren't overpriced. You might make that argument about the graphics packs though, but if the are it isn't much. The music packs most definitely aren't overpriced, since Waldetoft keeps pumping out really really great music.

10-15 minutes of music isnt worth $2 in a game where im playing for a long period of time a session

 

[Phibs]

10-15 minutes of music isnt worth $2 in a game where im playing for a long period of time a session

As long as people buy four minutes of lady gaga for 1,29$ a pop (Itunes) this argument holds zero currency.

 

[Darkrenown]

While I agree the lists on Steam really need to be sorted or separated better, it always confuses me when people say lots of DLC is a turn off. "Oh hey, I heard this game is good, I sure hope there's little or no additional content for it! I really hate being able to get more of a game I enjoy!". If I enjoy a game I want more of it, and it's normally pretty easy to check if its DLCs are more content or just horse armour.

The "I told my friend to try this game but the number of DLCs made them avoid it" story is also really strange to me, as it implies the teller has friends who happily accept their game recommendations normally but at the same time refuse to believe their explanation that the base game is fun without it and the DLC is just optional fun extra content. It's such an oddly specific level of trust.