The benefits of Steam Recent Review "Justice"

Paradox increased all of their prices recently to bring costs in other countries more in line or something like that they said. They're the publisher of Pillars which is unfortunate for them as Obsidian (the devs) are catching flak for the horseshit pricing uptick. I guess this is what happens when your company goes public like Paradox did recently.

The bigger kick in the nuts is a game released in 2010, Victoria II, still had a massive increase in price for countries such as Russia and so on. It went from around 350 vodka bucks to a bit under 700 in mid May. Ludicrous to double the price of a game that old.

They raised the regular price on Amazon too, but the sale price is still $17.99 today, which matches the historical low*. Not sure there's anything to be up in arms about here, other than for weirdos who buy their games full price.

Bethesda used to discount FO3 and FONV GOTY editions to $4.99 during Steam sales, but a few years ago all of a sudden the max sale price became $9.99 and it will probably be like that again this year since that's what the price was during GOG summer sale. Strangely no one ever seemed to talk about that.

(*-From places I'd actually trust with my billing info.)

GTA V / OpenIV backlash is entirely justified though.

given that GTA 5 was the #3 selling game last month in the USA, freaking FOUR YEARS after release, and is probably the most profitable video game in history, I seriously doubt it will have any impact on them. Shit, its #16 on steam right now and thats at $60 FULL PRICE, whereas everything above it as 60-70% discount or $10-20.

did paradox bump up the prices on US games too or just other countries?

It is a funny way to burn a game but i have a hard time really accepting mob justice, since it also leads to shit like people downvoting a game because it doesn't fit their political message (that recently announced cyberpunk game in which liberals and feminists created a dystopia and you live in it).

spronk said:

given that GTA 5 was the #3 selling game last month in the USA, freaking FOUR YEARS after release, and is probably the most profitable video game in history

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I think that mantle may belong to WoW

I've always held the opinion that Publishers should not be allowed to control their prices on E-Stores like they do on Steam. It should function more like physical stores where Steam buys X number of keys and then resells them at whatever price Steam feels like setting.

spronk said:

did paradox bump up the prices on US games too or just other countries?

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Other countries. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/price-increase.1022680/

Their statement concerning it:

Hey gang,
As you have noticed prices for our products have increased in certain regions around the globe and this is something we've intentionally done. The reason for this is to make our prices match the purchasing power of those areas, as well as create a more equal price point for our products across the globe.

Our prices have remained pretty much the same for several years and it's only natural for us to re-evaluate price points at regular intervals based on the strength of various currencies, fluctuations in world markets and many other factors. This is something that all publishers do and we are no exception.

Sadly this means that the price has gone up for certain regions and whilst this is something we'd like to avoid, it's necessary to keep our price point more in line with our other markets. We sincerely apologize for any frustration this may cause and hope you can understand why we are doing this.

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Oh, for some reason I was thinking regular price for it had been $39.99 for a while, but I guess $44.99 is what it has always been (for Hero edition). I don't see the problem then; if they didn't change the price globally then their explanation makes sense.

I understand the angst over Paradox's DLC approach, but there's no way I'm boycotting them. I love their grand strategy games too much to go without. If that's the price I have to pay to play a game like CK2 then I guess I'm going to pay it. It's so much better now than it was at release too. i own all the expansions at this point, but I've never paid full price for any of them. I just pick them in bulk during sales. Their games go up on sale all the time too, so it's not too hard to wait.

I hear you Ut. I'm not arguing that I like the pricing strategy. I'll keep buying them as long as the quality stays as high as it's been though. I always put hundreds of hours into these games.

Keep in mind that the time line is a bit different between a game like CK2 and W3 though. For one thing you typically see 2 or 3 expansions per year for their strategy games, so that's somewhere between 30 and 60 bucks a year if you buy them new. This has kept the game alive for 5 and a half years now. I suspect the alternative is that the team turn their efforts to releasing a completely new title in the series every couple of years. I think I'd prefer to see the base game expanded on for a longer time as they have done. I do think the expansions should probably be a few dollars cheaper at release and, even more importantly, they should package them into a cheaper bundled edition every couple of years to ease the entry into the game for newcomers. It doesn't impact me much though as I tend to stay fairly current.

The other thing is a large portion of that DLC is completely unnecessary for me. I don't buy the music and skin packs. I just purchase the expansions for the new mechanics, countries, etc...

They DMCAed some Modders tool that may or may not have been used in online cheats depending on which side of the story you believe.