Paradox has acquired Triumph Studios, makers of Age of Wonders & Overlord

I get why some people don't like Paradox's DLC strategy (Hint: Just don't buy them at full price), but why a proven Linux friendly company acquiring more development manpower should be a bad thing is beyond me. Is there something, ANYTHING the Linux community does NOT whine about? Paradox is the only larger publisher I am aware of putting ALL of their new games to Linux and doing so INHOUSE and not just porting! Their games are top quality, too. And the upside of the DLCs is that they keep adding new interesting features to their games for a long, long while after release, which keeps them interesting and fresh to play for years. Which puts their price into perspective, compared to Random First Person Shooter, which you shell out $60 for as well, play for 20 hours and then uninstall.

Some people are just never happy.

Quoting: TheBard

Quoting: Stupendous ManBad news in my opinion. I hate Paradox' DLC policy.

Me too. Paradox does indeed bring lots of games to Linux but the amount of DLC they can put is just insane. The Crusader Kings II: Collection bundle cost full price more than 300€ with 61 DLCs. That's just ridiculus.

In addition, Paradox does not seem very DRM-Free friendly. Still no Crusader King nor Stelaris on GOG but Overlord is and all the Age of Wonders are.

All Paradox Dev studio game are DRM-free (no idea about game they only publish, decision might be in dev hand), they just stick to Steam as it let them centralize both development (pretty sure they use steam for internal version control, as during stream you can see them boot nigthly version from steam, from time to time) and distribution.

But they have started to uncouple their multiplayer service from steam, which for Stellaris is currently in a public beta test, so they might be planing to start distributing on other platform. But maybe it is just so game are just easier to distribute in China, where Tencent likely take care of distribution, the multiplayer service and adapting the games to Chinese censure, as EU and HoI are problematic, for reason of Tibet, civil war and Japan.

The decision to dissociate from Steam exclusivity could be due to been much larger then they used to be, when they made that decision, back in the early CK2 day. (I know from experience, I had a Gamersgate version of CK2, which was the last non-steam version of a game, they distributed, until The Republic DLC, so like a year after release, if I remember right, after that everyone was forced toward the steam version if they still wanted update, as they stopped supporting it)


Last edited by iniudan on 30 June 2017 at 6:46 pm UTC

QuoteAll Paradox Dev studio game are DRM-free (no idea about game they only publish, decision might be in dev hand), they just stick to Steam [...]

That's the problem, in my opinion. For me, i'd say it's more bad news than good ones. But it's too early, we'll see...

I am kind of on the Fence about Paradox's DLC thing. As others have said it's both a bad thing and a good thing. What they should do as they are released is occasionally do discounted "DLC bundle", I have seen where they do it, but with the amount of weird 2 dollar DLC things that just add another nations icons/music etc, they should bundle like 10 of them at 15 bucks.

But on the other hand, who supports a game for longer than a year or two these days? No one, you just kind of have to hope that the community starts to release mods for it. Paradox's games have both!

Sure, they've got lots of DLC and it can be expensive if you want to buy everything, but a lot of it is just fluff. The Utopia DLC for Stellaris retails for EUR 19,99 but at the same time they released the Banks update for all players and that added a lot to the base game. They also recently updated the way air forces are handled in Hearts of Iron IV and I didn't have to purchase any DLC to get that update.

I dont know why people complain so much about having the option to get more content for a game they like, increasing its longevity. Its completely optional and if you don't like the policy you don't have to buy into it. If you're a completionist and feel like you have to have it you can just wait for a sale. Game development ain't cheap and these smaller studios have to get the money for their new projects from somewhere. The DLC model is here to stay I think to fund the ever increasing development costs. If they raised the prices of the base game to compensate people would also complain.

Paradox have been great to the Linux community and this merger hopefully means more games for us to play, and as others have said more manpower for Paradox, who are a very customer friendly company. They go as far as inviting fans to their offices to see upcoming games and get their feedback.