Actually, I think they don’t want linux gamers, with their higher technical savvy. Some game dev companies love how 90% of their bug reports come from 10% of their users (and even brag about it). Other companies would rather just not get those 90% of bug reports.

As one of my favorite baduk streamers puts it, “the mistake was earlier”.

Using dozens of DLCs to get B2B-grade revenue out of a game sounds like a great business strategy, but as Paradox is EOLing all those games that people have spent hundreds on, I think there is this reaction of “why should I prepare to spend hundreds again?”

I genuinely believe this is a “short term revenue” thing, and will ultimately cost them against a subscription-from-day-1 model. I mean, I doubt I’m the only person who can’t bring themselves to even LOOK at Crusader Kings 3. I never touched Sims 4 until it was free. And if EU5 comes out? I’ll act the same. Paradox already has more of my money than Blizzard, so more power to them, but how many people like me aren’t going to consider buying sequels? It’s not about the money, it’s about the investment of money. If I were in $500 from subscription fees, I’d feel less harmed than $300 in DLCs for a now-out-of-print game. We humans are a complicated psychology

For me, I’ll try em when they’re free or when they go full patient-gamer. Which is a shame because Paradox makes excellent games. They just keep making people like me want to wait to pull the trigger.

I had all of one complaint about that in all of New Atlantis. There’s a tiny convenience store that’s behind a loading screen. Everything else seemed ok/expected to me.

I’m sure most of them have never been to China.

I spent two weeks there and that was enough; I would never choose to live there. It’s a fairly safe place as a tourist or on a business trip, but there were dozens of red flags in that time as well.

Ironically, though, none of the red flags there had to do with Communism. More about censorship and unnecessary overt shows of military force around every corner. I saw more large arms there than driving through rural America, that’s for sure.