Surviving Mars: Below and Beyond DLC out with a free update, Surviving Mars free to keep

Yes! I love to see more support coming for Surviving Mars, I absolutely love this game and I want to see it getting the Stellaris treatment. Going to play this one ASAP

it's come with plenty of bugs across all platforms

This is something I was especially concerned about for this release. Paradox has had a lot of quality problems in the last few years and IIRC this is the first update for Surviving Mars not being done by the original SM team. All of the good SM work up to this point was done by Haemiont Games but for whatever reason they're out and someone called Abstraction is in.

This is definitely a release I was excited for but also definitely one I'm waiting on. :(

Update - after the article was published Paradox Interactive made Surviving Mars free to claim and keep on Steam until September 8th at 7PM CEST / 5PM UTC.

it's come with plenty of bugs across all platforms

This is something I was especially concerned about for this release. Paradox has had a lot of quality problems in the last few years and IIRC this is the first update for Surviving Mars not being done by the original SM team. All of the good SM work up to this point was done by Haemiont Games but for whatever reason they're out and someone called Abstraction is in.

This is definitely a release I was excited for but also definitely one I'm waiting on. :(

Paradox sacked their entire publishing QA department last year with very little warning and didn't even tell their other departments. They outsourced the work instead. They kept their own development QA who I believe work on their own PDS titles but there seems to have been some overlap on work and overall Paradox release quality has really suffered since then with significant bugs in most titles.

EDIT: There have also been issues reported with interal problems including bullying and harassment, and their CEO just suddenly quit citing irreconcilable differences with the board over the company strategy. Seems their incredible growth over the last few years is resulting in some issues, along with similar abuse and discrimination coming out of most game companies.


Last edited by Supay on 7 September 2021 at 5:57 pm UTC

it's come with plenty of bugs across all platforms

This is something I was especially concerned about for this release. Paradox has had a lot of quality problems in the last few years and IIRC this is the first update for Surviving Mars not being done by the original SM team. All of the good SM work up to this point was done by Haemiont Games but for whatever reason they're out and someone called Abstraction is in.

This is definitely a release I was excited for but also definitely one I'm waiting on. :(

Paradox sacked their entire publishing QA department last year with very little warning and didn't even tell their other departments. They outsourced the work instead. They kept their own development QA who I believe work on their own PDS titles but there seems to have been some overlap on work and overall Paradox release quality has really suffered since then with significant bugs in most titles.

EDIT: There have also been issues reported with interal problems including bullying and harassment, and their CEO just suddenly quit citing irreconcilable differences with the board over the company strategy. Seems their incredible growth over the last few years is resulting in some issues, along with similar abuse and discrimination coming out of most game companies.

It's so often trouble when some good outfit grows big enough that the suits come along and start making it over into a "proper" corporation (which is to say, a bunch of aggressive, short-sighted greedhead assholes).

The update (GOG version) does not work at all on Fedora 30 for me. It initially launches and even gets to the main menu, but SIGSEGV's a few moments after. On subsequent launches the crash is even earlier -- before the main menu is fully loaded.

The previous version is fine.


Last edited by Alm888 on 7 September 2021 at 8:08 pm UTC

Paradox sacked their entire publishing QA department last year with very little warning and didn't even tell their other departments. They outsourced the work instead. They kept their own development QA who I believe work on their own PDS titles but there seems to have been some overlap on work and overall Paradox release quality has really suffered since then with significant bugs in most titles.

EDIT: There have also been issues reported with interal problems including bullying and harassment, and their CEO just suddenly quit citing irreconcilable differences with the board over the company strategy. Seems their incredible growth over the last few years is resulting in some issues, along with similar abuse and discrimination coming out of most game companies.

I was curious and looked up some sources as I wanted to know more. There's this moderately lengthy article in Rock Paper Shotgun: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/paradox-interactives-qa-staff-allege-poor-treatment-low-pay-and-mismanaged-layoffs

For CEO changing, there's this: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-09-02-paradox-ceo-ebba-ljungerud-leaves-due-to-differing-views (there's not that much detail in that one)

UPDATE: The game runs fine if I disable Internet connection. Which means the crash occurs when it tries to "phone home" in order to display Paradox' "Privacy Policy". Maybe other reported errors are also associated with the game's "internet awareness".

They really impress me. They have the paid DLCs, but they throw in the odd free one and they tend to be good ones.

I never liked DLCs, but in this case they add value, and they have to pay the development to continue somehow. And for our mone they drop a free DLV here and there.

It's for me the model how DLCs should work, for the creator and the customers to keep the product fresh and the studio paid.

They really impress me. They have the paid DLCs, but they throw in the odd free one and they tend to be good ones.

I never liked DLCs, but in this case they add value, and they have to pay the development to continue somehow. And for our mone they drop a free DLV here and there.

It's for me the model how DLCs should work, for the creator and the customers to keep the product fresh and the studio paid.

This DLC isn't free, it is the basegame that is temporarily free. Paradox always do a patch alongside their paid DLCs which is free but those are mostly bugfixes and small tweaks that fit with the new DLC. I listen to their podcast and they have been having success with giving away the basegame or making it incredibly cheap then making money from the expanded DLC.

Paradox sacked their entire publishing QA department last year with very little warning and didn't even tell their other departments. They outsourced the work instead. They kept their own development QA who I believe work on their own PDS titles but there seems to have been some overlap on work and overall Paradox release quality has really suffered since then with significant bugs in most titles.

EDIT: There have also been issues reported with interal problems including bullying and harassment, and their CEO just suddenly quit citing irreconcilable differences with the board over the company strategy. Seems their incredible growth over the last few years is resulting in some issues, along with similar abuse and discrimination coming out of most game companies.

I was curious and looked up some sources as I wanted to know more. There's this moderately lengthy article in Rock Paper Shotgun: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/paradox-interactives-qa-staff-allege-poor-treatment-low-pay-and-mismanaged-layoffs

For CEO changing, there's this: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-09-02-paradox-ceo-ebba-ljungerud-leaves-due-to-differing-views (there's not that much detail in that one)

Sorry, I meant to add the sources. The RPS ones were the articles recommended by Paradox's union rep as the most balanced and accurate.

it's come with plenty of bugs across all platforms

This is something I was especially concerned about for this release. Paradox has had a lot of quality problems in the last few years and IIRC this is the first update for Surviving Mars not being done by the original SM team. All of the good SM work up to this point was done by Haemiont Games but for whatever reason they're out and someone called Abstraction is in.

This is definitely a release I was excited for but also definitely one I'm waiting on. :(

Paradox sacked their entire publishing QA department last year with very little warning and didn't even tell their other departments. They outsourced the work instead. They kept their own development QA who I believe work on their own PDS titles but there seems to have been some overlap on work and overall Paradox release quality has really suffered since then with significant bugs in most titles.

EDIT: There have also been issues reported with interal problems including bullying and harassment, and their CEO just suddenly quit citing irreconcilable differences with the board over the company strategy. Seems their incredible growth over the last few years is resulting in some issues, along with similar abuse and discrimination coming out of most game companies.

It's so often trouble when some good outfit grows big enough that the suits come along and start making it over into a "proper" corporation (which is to say, a bunch of aggressive, short-sighted greedhead assholes).

Actually, some of the largest criticism in their staff surveys has been around a divide between the old guard and the newer staff, where older hands are given far more leeway and excused for behaviour that would be considered inappropriate. Poor pay and lack of support for staff including ordering them to drop matters distressing them, again mostly the new staff, were also stated as issues. Check the RPS articles as they apparently have the most accurate info.

I also saw a lot of anger on their forums and other places regarding Johan, one of their oldest members, due to a series of games he worked on recently that have all had serious issues: Imperator, and the Leviathan expansion for EUIV are the ones I remember but I think there was another. Paradox backed him heavily and rejected the criticism, and the stuff people were saying did become nasty and personal, but I have no idea as to whether those issues were due to his handling or other problems in the company, or whether this is really an old guard vs new blood issue.

They do seem to be suffering some kind of growth/culture shock following their rapid expansion. And bizarrely, many of the issues they are being accused of regarding abuse, transparency, crunch time, fairness to staff etc are areas they have always generally been thought to excel at, and ones they themselves have been very vocal about. They have been one of my favourite developers/publishers for many years and I have played/owned pretty much everything they have done since EU2. They have always been good at Linux support as well. So I hope they can resolve whatever is going on and improve where they need to.

The bug is not so terrible ... the debug box that comes out is seen mostly at the beginning of a new game and very occasionally later on. On thing that is most annoying is that a lot of mods are not compatible with the new version. Although I noticed that some mod have been incorporated in the new version of the base game. Also old save games are not recognized by the game (format change?)

…old save games are not recognized by the game (format change?)

Location change.
Previously it was
$XDG_DATA_HOME/Surviving Mars/Save/
Now saves are in
<game_install_dir>/AppData/Save/
So, no more "XDG Base Directory Specification" compliant.
In a nutshell, the update is very bad and is riddled with bugs. I'm glad I saved previous version installers as GOG does not allow to roll back.


Last edited by Alm888 on 8 September 2021 at 5:22 pm UTC

I picked the wrong time to be in the middle of a play through. I have 78 hours play in the last 2 weeks. First up my savegames were missing, I worked out how to fix that but there are so many bug reports I'm hesitant to continue playing. I'm going to give it a few weeks, hopefully they are responsive. Its a great game so its really positive its getting updates but it seems the new team have not done an adequate job testing.