Paradox Interactive Reviews 100

Company that produce half baked and boring games and charge players the hell out of their bank accounts with $20DLCs to make games a little less boring (or give them new op options)

The most dishonest, anti customer service company I have ever bought a product from. I bought Cities Skylines from them a month ago. Aside from the fact that for every 1 hour I actually played the game, I spent 10 hours getting the game to work with mods, the actual gameplay worked from a graphics/hardware standpoint for about three weeks...UNTIL the developers updated the game last week and now the game doesn't play period.

I requested refunds from Steam and Paradox, who both refused. Kenny and Christian from Paradox are about as condescending and unhelpful as I've ever seen. After doing my due diligence and trying everything they suggested, my game still doesn't work and they claim its my computer. That is patently false, given that the hardware is more than sufficient, and the game played before their update.

Paradox is refusing to own the fact that their update rendered the game unplayable for me, and they refuse to do the right thing, because they are money grubbing and dishonest. The developers fed me a line of B.S. saying "we don't support mods" when the actual Cities Skylines advertisement online touts robust support and totally moddable. This is false advertising, which actually violates the law.

Go ahead, buy a Paradox product. After a month, it may still work. Then again, it may not. The "support" staff may help you, they may not. They will most likely say its just your end and leave you high and dry.

Hey Paradox, without customers to buy your product you are literally nothing, so maybe treat the customer like they are something and make things right when you wrong them.

I am having my lawyer draft a letter demanding a refund, coupled with a report to the Better Business Bureau, and putting out warnings across all consumer channels.

Updates used to be good but now they strip the base game down as much as possible and add the stripped parts as 150 separate DLC’s. If you can never buy from them. Some games are okay most are terrible without most of the DLC

Greedy company, told us we get the remastered cities skylines game for free if we owned the previous gen console version then tell us after release it only applies to digital purchasers not disc owners, won't be buying anything again from them now unless they allow us to play like they said. Greedy useless lying company.

Amazing games historic games, is mostly accurate with some bugs, DLC are costly but cheap during sales and a great company fighting against Chinese cencorship

My antivirus warns me that Cities.exe (from Cities Skylines, a game I've played for over 1,000 hours) has suddenly tried to connect, while loading the game, to a URL named "api.buffpanel.com" infected with phishing, and from Paradox Interactive Support, they not only told me without checking that it is a false positive, but that the game is fine as it is and that I should change the antivirus to have a result according to their opinion. Unfortunately, under these circumstances, I cannot recommend buying or playing these disreputable video games with that terrible customer service.

DLC laden trains on every game
If you consider older games, you are looking at walls of DLC that come well over 100-200 dollars
and if you plan on playing a newer game, be prepared for what is essentially a subscription service of charges slowly building to that 100-200+ wall of DLC over the time they deign to give it attention

I usually buy Paradox games on Steam, cause it's my main Library for PC games, but there is nothing wrong with their own Website, It's plenty Useable.

Also to all the reviews talking about the company behind this website, we aren't reviewing the company, but the website.

The website itself is pretty generic, nothing special it's a plaza website, so you can easily find your way to specific wikis or other websites from here.

Don't link your games to accounts and then deactivate accounts when "not used". We all use steam... go figure we don't come to your site. And if that IS the way your going, then make "re-activation" possible (if not automatic) when we log back in... don't require me to write THROUGH my account to get my account re-activated! What the H#$% is wrong with y'all?!

Completly ruined my favourite game Prison Architect. Every game they buy from some small, great developer turns into a buggy, cash grabbing dlc-innuendo.

Constant use of censorship in their own forum when constructive critisism is posted.

Releasing "grand strategy" titles that are just shells without content and full of bugs. Then they release DLC for 8 years until game is barely playable. Never buying another game from Paradox.

great games but you gotta buy dlc

AVOID GAMES OF THIS COMPANY.

One would expect better ai for such a long time of development and time consuming game, instead in every one of their games its jimmy from the kindergarten playing against you.
Wanna go multiplayer? ready to get crashed all the time.

Garbage dlc policy just lootbox mechanics disguised as dlc's and you gotta pay for it ridiculous amounts of money bcs why not. greedy much ?

Bugs, new trash launcher there is so much to say but the most simple way to put it is; these guys do not have competition so they are going full garbage.

avoid this company and their games.

I write as a player with a thousand-odd hours on legal purchases.

Paradox-developed historical titles (I played EU3/4 CK2/3, Vic 2 and Imperator: Rome) are generally good at modelling important mechanisms and events peculiar to a particular era, made immersive by its OST and country-flavour modifiers, mechanics and events.

However, in recent years, there is a trend of hiding important game features behind paid DLCs, many of which could significantly simplify gamers' in-game experience ('Quality-of-life' features). This is coupled with an eschewing of deep simulation for simplistic behaviour (there is, for example, a running slur of 'pig stabbing' by the community regarding its newest Imperator: Rome title). Whilst the devs are known to be very responsive on the forums, I encountered a curt and laidback response from the business side of customer service in resolving my pain points. Ditto the numerous bugs and exploits.

Granted, there are many players who have no issues with the aforementioned problems, but when considering the overall engagement of the game with the higher intellect (deep strategic thinking as opposed to mental stimulation, which is easily obtainable from other publishers), game playability without paid DLCs, and difficulty in resolving pain points via customer service, I no longer think Paradox titles represent good value for money.

One of the few saving graces of Paradox titles are the multitude of players inspired by it to create numerous mods, the use of which adds realism to the gameplay experience. Some of the very same players are also active in reporting bugs and suggesting improvements, which greatly aids in the polishing of Paradox titles over time. Readers who find their combination of titles and mods may very well find justification in committing to a purchase. Nonetheless, I urge ample caution, as Paradox games are costly in both time and money.

BEWARE: the DLCs from paradox are basically expensive LOOTBOXES, constantly expanding gambling-like RNG-mechanics instead of actual strategic depth, AI improvement, or even FIXING BUGS

if you complain about that on their forums they will ban you so that you will also lose access to technical support in case you've got problems with your game

i've still been a fan of their games for a long while because there are not many other developers of grand strategy games out there (except for eversim with the GPS4 power and revolution series, which i'm turning to now) but recently their games (especially stellaris, hoi4 and eu4) got shallow and dull, all the strategic depth is being simplified to gambling-like RNG, and even the UI is designed silly and cartoonish with huge buttons (probably planning on porting them to mobile devices later on)

so as they are leaving the grand strategy genre, i am also leaving them

farewell!

Awful ordered Xmas tables nothing like pictures and tiny

No goods. No email. No communication. Paid by PayPal. Raised a query and refunded the same day.

Paradox are one of the few consumer-centric companies out there - they get a bad rap for their DLC practices, but if you either buy them when they come out or when they go on sale, it's really not that expensive.

Regardless, my review is mostly about Christian Arvidsson of the support team - I dealt with them on 2 occasions last year, and both times their response times were extraordinary; I got a resolution within the hour on both occasions. Couldn't be happier with the service provided by them.

TERRIBLE TERRIBLE UTTER TERRIBLE...
Tried to contact Them because i didn’t get all things In my dlc.
I contacted them via mail but Got an auto answer “we don’t receive e-mails use this link to go to our website” I then did that, I had to login and got the message “verifiy email to login”.And then the loop started because they didn’t send the email verification. And To contact them I needed to login which I could not
Terrible AVOID AT ALL COSTS
Wish I could give 0 stars SMH