Price of the game plus DLCs

[GeirOve]

The game with the DLCs are now up to about 120 USD, how much do you think Paradox can get away with? This price, no substantial content drop and the lack of updates still the game has allmost 90 procent positiv review.

What happen to the customers and Paradox?

[Athmet]

You new here ?

[GeirOve]

Originally posted by Athmet:

You new here ?

Does that change your answer?

[Razorblade]

Why would you buy each DLC separately? It's only $80 if you buy the Royal Edition + Friends and Foes ($65 on sale).

[GeirOve]

Originally posted by Razorblade:

Why would you buy each DLC separately? It's only $80 if you buy the Royal Edition + Friends and Foes ($65 on sale).

"only".
People tend to buy stand alone, cause the one time investment is higher and they have other things to pay for. I have changed the question for you

The game with the DLCs are now up to about 80 USD, how much do you think Paradox can get away with? This price, no substantial content drop and the lack of updates still the game has allmost 90 procent positiv review.

What happen to the customers and Paradox?

[Razorblade]

Originally posted by GeirOve:

The game with the DLCs are now up to about 80 USD, how much do you think Paradox can get away with?

If CK2, EU4, and Stellaris are any indication, then a few hundred dollars.

[Athmet]

Originally posted by GeirOve:

Originally posted by Athmet:

You new here ?

Does that change your answer?

Just go on every other game of PDX and you will have your answer.

[jerrypocalypse]

Like every product that exists, if you do not like the price then wait for a sale. There's nothing for PDX to "get away with." You act as if they're commiting a crime. It's a free market and people can price their product whatever they feel it is worth.

[Blood of Kerensky]

Originally posted by GeirOve:

Originally posted by Razorblade:

Why would you buy each DLC separately? It's only $80 if you buy the Royal Edition + Friends and Foes ($65 on sale).

"only".
People tend to buy stand alone, cause the one time investment is higher and they have other things to pay for. I have changed the question for you

The game with the DLCs are now up to about 80 USD, how much do you think Paradox can get away with? This price, no substantial content drop and the lack of updates still the game has allmost 90 procent positiv review.

What happen to the customers and Paradox?

Since this is a game which you can play for multiple thousand hours and still seeing new situations, it's fully justified when I look at how much modern AAA titles are priced and only being able to provide 20h of enjoyment.

[wven]

Originally posted by GeirOve:

The game with the DLCs are now up to about 120 USD, how much do you think Paradox can get away with? This price, no substantial content drop and the lack of updates still the game has allmost 90 procent positiv review.

What happen to the customers and Paradox?

Games are luxury item. If you can not or do not want to pay the asking price then just move on. I am not sure why people get confused about this.

[Blood of Kerensky]

Originally posted by wven:

Originally posted by GeirOve:

The game with the DLCs are now up to about 120 USD, how much do you think Paradox can get away with? This price, no substantial content drop and the lack of updates still the game has allmost 90 procent positiv review.

What happen to the customers and Paradox?

Games are luxury item. If you can not or do not want to pay the asking price then just move on. I am not sure why people get confused about this.

Because some people don't buy game to play them, they buy the right to complain.

[Kimlin]

Let’s see, if they add a $30, $15 and $5 DLC every year, over the next 7 years plus the current $80 price. About $430, we can guess there will be bundles so maybe $300. That would be non inflation adjusted.

[fakemon64]

i dont mind opening up my wallet for a game that ive spent hundreds of hours playing, especially if i intend on playing for at least a few hundred more.

[Rex is back, baby!]

Tl;dr:

Ballparking, they need ~35 million USD a year to break even.
CK3 (vanilla) has made them 120 million USD. It will take 4 years until costs > profit.
How to alleviate this? DLC!

note. I'm half-assing my research, so the numbers are heavily exaggerated, not accurate, and ballpark, but hopefully you get an idea ^^.

Paradox is a "For Profit" company. Their goal is to see the Green/black Arrow going up. They are not nonprofit. So they're not trying to 'break even.' Any excess profit usually goes back into the hands of the investors.

If you disagree with how Capitalism works. Rebel. Rebel against your establishment.
That's the only way to change economy.
Capitalism is here to stay. No amount of complaining on the internet will change this.

Slacktivism does not work. Take to the streets.

As rebelling is silly and most likely ineffective in the modern sense. Look to three pillars of capitalism.

1.) Privatization/Free market. The ability to own/influence property. Is PDX publicly traded?

A: Yes. Paradox Interactive AB (publ). Currently priced at $23.42 USD a share.
According to https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/investors/ownership-structure
You need about two miillion shares to become a Majority Shareholder and thus have influence on company decisions.


2. Self-interest. PDX allows people to act in pursuit of their own good, without regard for sociopolitical pressure. The fact that you are here today, voice opinions, and can talk about anything in regards to the company is a benefit to this. Just as long as you keep things civil and don't attack people ad hominem, etc.

3. Competition. Arguably, PDX is the hegemony of 4X games. As far as its unique historical game designs, there really are no competitors. Sure, we have Fireaxis' Civilization and Creative Assembly's Total War series, but each of these heavy-hitters fit a niche of their own. Any PDX clone-type games are just not up to par. Allegedly, '23-'24 will see more games into the competitive sphere, but we'll see. Else, what's stopping you from making your own franchise?

Not to mention, what are the operation costs of PDX? Wonder why they charge money on things? Read these:

https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/investors/financial-reports

These are geared more toward profits than costs. To look at costs, you have to dig into the report itself. This is the 2021 one:

https://www.ipohub.io/render/efd1a741-1282-4ee0-a1d8-b61d8ffa7842.pdf?original=wkr0006

PDX does not normally disclose internal information, like HR mumbo-jumbo, so the best we can do is guest production costs. Human capital is expensive. It's way cheaper to have 1 employee on overtime than 2 employees (why crunch is very popular in video game development).

We'd have to do math. In Sweden, the cost of an employee for game design, ballparking, is about 130k. That does not include vacation, sick pay, health insurances, etc.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/ikvv4m/ck3_development_team/
This image counts 41 staff as of 3 years ago.

130k x 41 = 5 million, 371k.
To break even with just the CK3 team, 3 years ago, they'd need to make back more than five million dollars USD.

That's just employee costs at the smallest estimate.
Next we have to look at operating costs.

According to the financial report, operating costs is 321 million SEK, which is basically 30 million USD.

So already, we're at a cost of 35 million a year, with many missing information.
So let's say they sell a CK3 for 60 USD. To break even, they'd need to sell 600 thousand copies every year. As of March, 2022, they've sold 2 million copies. So they've made profit. Huzzah. Allegedly of course, with these ball parked-inaccurate numbers.

How do we then alleviate the costs? Pool resources from other games, or invest in DLC.

Not to mention the elephant-in-the-room: Inflation.
The only country in the world that has successful deflation economy is Japan. Most every other Western country deals with inflation economy.

Discussing economics and accounting hurts the brains for many, but if you want to know why things cost as much as they do, do research. Go to a supermarket lately? Seen the prices of eggs? Eggs are a perfect way to test how the economy is going.

Ultimately, in a Capitalistic society, you only make money, to spend money. PDX is not a commodity, it is not a need. It is in competition with every other entertainment industry to go after one's disposable income. The income that comes after you take care of your needs and obligations.

PDX is very transparent with a lot of their internal workings, stuff they don't really have to be transparent about. They've also seen great success lately compared to 2016 when they went public.

They're generating a lot of revenue. How much of that revenue is profit? I am not willing to spend more time on this post to find out :b.


Point being, if you want to understand why something costs what it does, look at the economics behind it. Great way to learn self-budgeting too^^

Also, I would suggest avoiding Stellaris or EU4 if you think $120 is a steep dlc price...

Edit: I mathed wrong. FIX.

[Athmet]

Originally posted by < blank >:

Paradox is a "For Profit" company. Their goal is to see the Green/black Arrow going up. They are not nonprofit. So they're not trying to 'break even.' Any excess profit usually goes back into the hands of the investors.

If you disagree with how Capitalism works. Rebel. Rebel against your establishment.
That's the only way to change economy.
Capitalism is here to stay. No amount of complaining on the internet will change this.

Slacktivism does not work. Take to the streets.

As rebelling is silly and most likely ineffective in the modern sense. Look to three pillars of capitalism.

1.) Privatization/Free market. The ability to own/influence property. Is PDX publicly traded?

2. Self-interest

3. Competition

Discussing economics and accounting hurts the brains for many, but if you want to know why things cost as much as they do, do research. Go to a supermarket lately? Seen the prices of eggs? Eggs are a perfect way to test how the economy is going.

Ultimately, in a Capitalistic society, you only make money, to spend money. PDX is not a commodity, it is not a need. It is in competition with every other entertainment industry to go after one's disposable income. The income that comes after you take care of your needs and obligations.

Snip out a lot from your post to just highlight the above.

Completely true. But you see there is a dissonance on Steam forums: lambda gamer will be socialism = bad / capitalism = good. But the same lambda gamer will then complain about stuff that is direct consequence of capitalism... none of them will want to start fighting that and instead will crusade on Steam forum toward business that only do their job to make profit....

And you are right: what are they actually hoping to achieve on Steam forums ? If you really want to change things and how they work, Steam forum is definitely not the correct place.

In any case, thank you for the time you took to make your post. I do not believe many of the "muh DLC/expensive" crowd will actually learn anything from it though.

[GeirOve]

Its the price point vs lack of content vs future contents price point vs steam reviews I find strange.

Ive paid more money for lesser games and I like CK3 even its very barebones. I just dont get the steam reviews compared to the critisism I have read on the Paradox forum, sosial media and on their community Page on steam. "Expensive" is relative anyway. 87 procent positive and their DLCs get so much critisism. Even Johan came out and called the community toxic cause Paradox get so much hazzle. Victoria is mixed, and CK3 is very positive