Serious question : why is this 10 YEARS OLD GAME is still growing in steam player count?

[Kilvan]

https://steamcharts.com/app/236850#All

I think 99% of the games sink their player base after 2 years

So what is going on with EU4 that make it so successfull after all theses years?

Disclaimer: i got 2K hours in it, so im a bit crazy

[Marquoz]

The DLC-haters won't like my answer, but it's true nonetheless: EU4 keeps getting better. More mechanics, more features, more QoL, more depth and breadth. It's true that Paradox has little real competition in the historical map-painting genre, but that alone isn't nearly enough to explain steady sales growth. Increasing quality, however, is.

[Armoguy]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

The DLC-haters won't like my answer, but it's true nonetheless: EU4 keeps getting better. More mechanics, more features, more QoL, more depth and breadth. It's true that Paradox has little real competition in the historical map-painting genre, but that alone isn't nearly enough to explain steady sales growth. Increasing quality, however, is.

[Narrowmind]

It's amazing, honestly.

[Armoguy]

When the game was perhaps 3 years old, I remember playing and expanding my territory to a fairly large size. It was fun, but I remember thinking that there was little depth in the process of conquering provinces. This was before there were many peacetime options both in diplomacy and in internal affairs. It was before states, estates, government capacity, etc. It felt rather bland after getting used to the few mechanics the game had.

[Ashling]

Nostalgia for a lot of people. There's a lot of top rated games which are really just carried by nostalgia having similar, if not more, players than EU4 (Age of Empire 2, Garry's Mod, Skyrim, the Binding of Isaac). By all accounts they should be dead but either the community, the game play loop, or mods have kept them alive.
For EU4 it's probably the latter two (a whole host of awesome mods and a game play loop which has a low skill floor but high skill ceiling and a lot of comfortable floor in between).

Plus it's like one of the few strategy games with an ai that actually plays the game.

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

There's also the fact that new games these days (well, those put out by well-recognized publishers at least) tend to be disappointing people more often than not. It's feeling more and more to me lately that the games from round about 10-12 years ago that are still supported are something of a "peak" in terms of overall quality right now. Most of what's coming out nowadays seem to be either low-effort snoozefests, blatant cash grabs, or glorified tech demos trying to carry themselves on pure visual fidelity. And then you have the occasional indie gem here and there that puts every AAA developer to shame while barely even trying.

[Unimportant]

Happen naturally when you are actively maintain, improve and add things into your game.

[bri]

Originally posted by Unimportant:

Happen naturally when you are actively maintain, improve and add things into your game.

Hard to say since very few publishers/developers actually attempt to do so.

As for EU IV, it started as a pretty good game and followed the then typical Paradox trend of being well-supported and improved over time. Thus, more and more people had it recommended to them or found it and started playing. It's also a game with extremely high re-playability even without the addition of new content and more than a few people will take a hiatus for a few months (or more) then "get the itch" and come back to it.

(by the way, HoI IV has an even more pronounced upwards trend than EU IV and Stellaris has finally started increasing the between spike plateaus as well)

[Kapika96]

A lot of games just get released and that's it. Maybe a few DLCs in the first couple years and then nothing more. There's no reason for them to keep selling beyond that, they're done.

EU4 has had 10 years of regular updates and DLC. When a dev supports a game over the long term, so will the player base.

[tonypa]

EU4 has been updated a lot, not just the DLC content, but base game and even base mechanics. Forts for example have been completely reworked (fairly sure more then once). Blocking a strait with single boat was a strategy once. There were no estates or governing capacity. These have all been added or redesigned over the years, improving the game, expanding it.

Publishers like EA or 2K would just release new version every year, you need to buy whole game again. Every year. Full price. Not only that but since everything requires online servers, you can only play it for 2 years until servers are turned off and you can never play it again. I won't even mention lootboxes, subscriptions and all that on top of full price you are expected to spend on those. If you bought EU4 10 years ago, you have already had many-many changes, bugfixes and free additions without spending absolutely anything. Plus the game works fine without Steam or internet connection. All these base game fixes and changes have been payed by DLCs which remain optional content.

Yes, it can be a bit ugly and laggy, but the game still works on very low spec computers. There are many players with weak hardware who simple can not play those 4k-DLSS-titles every developer likes to release. The Cities Skylines 2, released just month ago, has already dropped below EU4 in daily players, because it simply does not run on older hardware.

[PDXRyagi]

The EU4 team couldn't keep it up without help from you, the community!

Whether it's giving us constructive feedback, helping new players learn the game, or even just playing :D

We give our thanks to all of you <3

[Mr.M]

Besides all the hate, memes and critic towards PDX (even from myself) EU4 is undeniably just a pretty good strategy game.

And the fact that each DLC adds free stuff and changes large parts of the game means theres a lot of replayability in there.

[grognardgary]

Have the nerfed the Catholic church yet?

[Arcrom21]

Because it's fun. The replay value is near infinite.

[bri]

Originally posted by grognardgary:

Have the nerfed the Catholic church yet?

No