>PoE less profitable than Tyranny
Sawyercucks BTFO'd again.

>>1448908
How?

> Surviving the Aftermath is profitable
HOW

>>1448944
Two reasons.

The first is that PoE was funded through Kickstarter and those pre-orders didn't bring any profit to Paradox. So if you assume that half of the sales were from Kickstarter (I don't know if that's true, just an arbitrary number) Paradox effectively can't count that half of sales.

The second reason is that Tyranny was made on a shoestring budget, basically using spare teammembers, and they didn't have to make a new engine since they could just use PoE's. It didn't sell nearly as well as PoE, but because it cost them almost nothing to make it still made a bigger profit in comparison.

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>>1448905
with average player number of 6,000, I struggle to understand how it was profitable

>>1448905
They're going to pull an Imperator with vicky3 we all know it since there's only like 500 people playing vicky3 at times.

>>1449019
marketing, reason why AAA games are garbage now, they know they will make more money if they advertise it well to NPCs, quality of game doesnt matter.

>>1449021
that depends on dlc sales

>>1449019
Number of sales doesn't equate to number of players. If a million people buy the game and all of them drop it in the first week, you may have 0 players but you still made a million sales.

See how it's not in the "endless" category. The "profitable" games are just the ones thet sold enough to meet or exceed expectations. The "endless" games are the ones that are expected to stay profitable in the long run.

Considering the legacy that the previous Vicky games created, I'd say Vic3 scraping out some profitability for them is a bad sign. Any idea how they're shitty DLC's are performing

>>1448905
Paracuck games are made on a shoestring budget so it has to fail pretty hard to not break even. Vic3 was still a highly anticipated sequel and probably had a bunch of commie cucks buy into it because of the marketing even if they don't keep playing it in the long run.

>>1448905
It's actually them admitting that Vic 3 is a failure, see >>1449024
The fact that their biggest release in 2022 and the game they hyped up for over a year ended up not reaching the "endless" category shows how much they screwed up. Note that, with the exception of Imperator, the last 5 games (I'm counting Ck2 even if it's not in the pic) that the Paradox dev team made belong to the endless category.

>>1449036
To be fair it might be too early to call it endless. On the other hand they called CK3 endless even though that had jack shit in terms of content despite being out for a few years.

I pity all the cucks who bought vicky3 since they knew what they were getting since the leak and dev diaries. Imagine buying it and then being disappointed when it's shit as predicted.

>>1448905
It's probablty the 10th time I've said it, but I'll say it again:
Paradox is trading prestige for sales right now (for a few years). CK3 sold on CK2's reputation. Vic3 sold on Vic2's reputation. EU5 will sell on EU4's reputation. But beyond that it's over. The player count of each games of the post-imperator generation will be too low to sell DLCs as HoI4 & EU4 did, and PDX will need to wait a long time to make a CK4/VIC4/EU6 palatable. So what's gonna make them money?

>>1448905
Yes. It turns out racist chuds are a minority and people who aren't bitter a-holes can enjoy fun videogames without complaining about POCs constantly.

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>>1449096
>So what's gonna make them money?
They don't care. It's "in" now to go broke.

>>1448905
I wonder how many people want to refund it but can't because they played for too long

>>1449104
I think it's a cultural revolution. They're getting rid of all the old guard beloved companies and replacing them with new upstarters that only produce shit so the people have no where to get away from all the wokeshit.

>>1448905
As "profitable" as Surviving Mars and Tyranny are, kek

>>1448905
How is cities skylines so popular? Isn't it basically a traffic management simulator?

>>1449119
>Isn't it basically a traffic management simulator?
That's what every city builder is and don't let anyone convince you otherwise

>>1448905
I don't think "profitable" is good enough to qualify as a win in this industry. If you're making profit on the order of pennies on the dollar, that's not a very good investment. Either you have to make a substantial profit, or you have to look at the bigger picture of how the game affects your branding and future installments of the series before you can call it a win.

>>1449096
I was going to make a similar post to this, so I guess instead of doing that I will answer yours.

>So what's gonna make them money?
There is a misunderstanding here of what "them" means.
Paradox will go under in 5-10 years because there is no reputation left, yes. But the people at the top of it now don't care about that. They're going to collect fat checks by appeasing shareholders with pretty graphics like the one in the OP. When the money dries up, they will leave. Someone else will come in, fire half the employees, get a huge bonus for increasing profit by cutting costs and Paradox will be in an even worse state. Finally, it will die, or more likely be bought by another company.
Take a look at Activision Blizzard if you want to know what Paradox will look like in 5 years.

>>1449144
The funny thing is those layoffs could fix Paradox... if they were targeted exclusively at worthless corpo make-work jobs like
>corporate communication specialists
>community managers
>project managers
>jira task pushers
>diversity officers
etc etc ad infinitum

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>>1449144
The centralization of gaming just like everything else. We're getting closer to Weyland-Yutani.

>>1449044
I assume cause the dlc they released is doing good, victoria 3 is still releasing dlc that the pre-orderfags already paid for and its already lost 90% of the playerbase.

>>1448905
Im skeptical of this presentation

Some of these categorizations make sense. In Endless, EU4 has obviously printed money forever. Cities Skylines is the only city building game in town. HoI4 I think surprised everyone by having such a long shelf life and actually growing playerbase. Stellaris, sure, I guess too.

But CK3? Its only been out for 3 years and basically only had one expansion. It’s way too early to tell for one thing, but even if they had a relatively good ‘hit rate’ for the DLC they’ve put out…it has a small and kinda dwindling playerbase.

As for ‘profitable’, I mean sure. That could be factually true but obviously whether or not they continue supporting it is dependent on more than whether they recouped development costs.

As for SD:44 I’ve always wondered what happened there. Eugen / Paradox immediately broke off relationship after that. I wonder what went down. Eugen and Paradox seemed like a very symbiotic relationship. But then Eugen basically fell apart and half their staff walked.

>>1449210
>Eugen and Paradox seemed like a very symbiotic relationship
yeah i bet there is a lot of cross over / potential cross over between hearts of iron fans and eugen game fans. they honestly should have called steel division "hearts of iron: steel division" to try and suck up the hoi4 babbies. the only problem is though that sd:44 was a shitty game where every unit gets pinned and routed at the first bullet, and no one considered that actually ww2 weapons are not as much fun as cold war-era weapons because they are all so antiquated lol
desu its a good question i have no idea wtf happened after wgrd. they put out the piece of shit that was act of aggression, and then bungled their return to the wargame formula with sd:44. then there was some internal drama and half the staffed walked out
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/eugen-systems-devs-on-strike-after-claiming-violation-of-rights
leave it to the french to fuck themselves for no reason

>>1449210
>>1449233
Even if they are calling it "profitable" here I think PDX was unhappy with the performance, but I think it's kinda their own fault. They were the publisher but they did a poor job of actually marketing it. Even if Wargamefags weren't happy about it it was still an okay game at least and PDX had enough WW2autists to carry it with a new audience, but even the paradrones that followed their streams and shit barely knew it was happening because they were not featuring it. If you publish a game and most of your hardcore audience is not aware you did you kinda fucked up. It got a couple of DLCs but I think they have already written that off and didn't promote that at all. Within a year they cut off relationship with eugen and removed most references to it.
Maybe they were already aware of the financial issues, maybe there were other issues with the relationship in the background or it got screwed over due to some internal PDX politics. hard to tell.

>>1448905
The only thing that I know is that my mind read "Voice of the poo" instead of "Voice of the people"

>>1448905
>Using not paid QA
>Relasing the game as a bugged mess
>Recycled and copy pasted features
>3d models not crafted but generated with a lot of visual glitches

Yep, I believe it when they say that it's profitable, they relased low cost garbage.

>>1449149
>this ancient image
It was 4 in 2020 already iirc

>>1448905
Is this real? Did they really make a graph showing their games as "endless"?

>>1449382
Yes, it was a presentation done for shareholders, and despite goofy name, "endless" label pretty much explains how the business treats those products

>>1449382
shut up goyim and foinance my commie club

>>1449290
yes, disney+fox and cbs+viacom combined

>>1449382
Yes, they explained it generates 'endless profit' or something like that.

>>1448905
>4 "endless" titles between 2013 and 2016
>1 "endless" title between 2017 and now
grim

>>1449022
what a midwit npc post

>>1448905
>tyranny was profitable
>universally recognized as one of the best CRPGs out there with some really interesting but due to the scope of the game underdeveloped ideas
>no sequel
wtf

also
>pillars of eternity
>broken even
>crowd funded
>still listed as their game
>has a sequel
>which was also crowd funded
lol

>>1449851
Either the ceo blatantly lies to the investors, among whose are investment fund and a big european bank, or maybe, just maybe the reception of the product is worthless data when analyzed alone, with disconnection from the costs and sales numbers

>>1449877
>the ceo blatantly lies to the investors
More likely then you think.

>>1449851
Tyranny had a tiny budget,

PoE had a large budget, and whatever reception it had, it didn't extend to "buying the sequel". Almost as if Obsidian underwent the same "sell reputation for cash" process as described here: >>1449096

>>1449019
It sold 900k copies at full price after less than a year, of course it is

>>1449019
It sold very well because of hype. Player retention doesn't matter that much.

>>1449044
also the fact that the normies that pdx was trying to market ck3 to all dropped the game anyway. mods heavily carry the game, its why they made it so you dont need ironman anymore to get achievements

>>1450084
This is why muh wider audience never works for grand strategy since casuals don't like the genre. Fucking paradox are retarded to think you can apply that formula for every genre.

>>1450101
That and trying to attract console players for some reason, that's why war is dumbed down in ck3 and isn't a thing at all in vic3, moving tons of soldiers around with a controller is hard

>>1450101
At least half of their audience still doesn't use any mods, those are the casuals.

>>1450197
But if I use mods I can't get the achievements

>>1450241
not anymore with all 3 newest games (imperator, ck3, vic3). also
>caring about achievements

>>1450244
Didn't know that. I play mostly EU anyway.
>caring about achievements
How else am I supposed to compare e-penis size?

>>1450285
dickpics?

>>1448982
cool buildings and productions

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>>1449019
The game is as popular as CK3 and EU4. The players are just spread over more time zones making the number seem lower.

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I'm confident that vic3 will eventually be awesome, which is why I got the grand edition to save money, but every long time paradox fan knows to avoid a new game like the plague until at least the first major expansion. At that point it's likely to be past (but may still only be nearing) the intersection of the game's fun graph with that of its predecessor, at which point the new game is superior.

I estimate that we'll hit F(t)3 ∩ F(t)2 at around the time that SOI comes out in 2024.

bampu

>>1449019
Probably spent literally 0 on "devloping" the game

>>1450608
Vic3 will be good in 2-3 years, when they completely overhaul the warfare. Right now Victoria 3 has the entertainment value of a cookie clicker tycoon game.

>>1448905
>March of the eagles
>profitable

Why are they lying?

>>1452292
I fucking hate zoomers man

>>1448905
I don't even understand why they are showing that shit.
Who cares if it's profitable.

Every John Tiller game could never be proftiable.
He did them because it was his hobby.

>>1452416
Its for investors

>>1452419
Investing in a strategy games development studio is literally the worst decision for any portfolio.

>>1450538
Why would they like like this when all of the games show the player count by hour? If the interest in the game was not constraint to one geographical region you would see a very consistent player count at all times of the day.
But you don't.

>>1449096
Vicky4 is NEVER going to happen.

>>1452422
Considering that Paradox has zero competition for their own developed games its a pretty safe investment, the only time it didn't seem that way was after their old CEO pushed for mobile gaming and publishing many games that no one could care less about.

>>1452435
It's safe but not profitable.
Any real industrial company makes more profit in less time.

>>1448905
>only profitable
>not endless
Oh yeah, it has been placed among the Paradox smash hits like uhh... Tyranny and Surviving Mars.

>>1452435
>Paradox has zero competition
a 1 man team like the guy who makes Shadow Empire mogs them, honestly slitherine seems to grow as their competitor and I see autistic strategy players to slowly migrate towards them as paradox keeps shitting the bad with their new releases

>>1452448
Shadow Empire's AI is a joke compared to the one that Paradox games have, the game presentation is also not remotely up to their standards, the game also focuses on things that most players don't find fun like logistics, i particularly don't like the strategems systems since its tedious and hard to keep track of. Other than that is a pretty decent game but don't expect Slitherine to compete with Paradox anytime soon.

>>1452450
>AI is a joke compared
what? Only a delusional person or somebody who never never played SE would write that, AI in that game is state of the art compared to anything paradox has produced.
The strategem system is just another take on random events, also how do you complain about something being tedious and hard to keep track of while playing paradox games.

>>1452460
The AI is incapable of doing diplomacy on their own and they even get buffs like not needing to build roads, yes it is competent at moving units around but that's about it. I don't like the stratagem system since i feel its poorly implemented, too many times you get cards you don't need or can't even use, especially the diplomatic ones.

Shadow Empire is janky because it was made by wargaming boomer. Card systems are beloved in wargames. If you don't like hex wargames, you won't like Shadow Empire.

>>1452466
??
major AIs absolutely needs to build roads it just gets bonuses to doing it, you can still cut them off logistics and starve, diplomacy is so strong it makes the game too easy, better to avoid considering its war game where you win by conquest of hostile planet and not some diplomatic victory.
Why dont you even criticize AI, paradox games AI is literally braindead or broken and not using half of the systems present in their games.

>>1452292
it's a failed project by AGEOD, Paradox's work was just fixing it a bit and releasing it as is.

>>1448905
OOF
they listed Victoria 3 not in the 'endless' category.
This means they probably won't keep making dlcs for years to come, and instead make just a few.

Bros is Tours and Tournaments worth it? It seems really damn expensive.

>>1448905
>Empire of Sin
>Miss
I hate parajews, but this one hurts.

>>1453171
They still scamming people with an expansion pass thats never coming btw.

>>1449096
HOI5 on HOI4's reputation.

>>1453359
>HOI5
OH BOY, I can't wait to buy all the features that HOI3 and HOI4 added all over again. Come on, Paradox, take my money already.

>>1449382
>>1449389
>>1449759
Endless Space 3 when?

>>1453360
Just you wait, it's going to happen. Any criticize you write in the comments of YouTube or Reddit will be downvooted to suppress your dissent. Then when the NPCs turn on the shitty game that has been released, they will say they were against it the entire time.

>>1449019
Lot of dumb fucks who got tricked by the marketing, bought the game and never refunded

>>1453362
I remember when I tested Reddit, para shill forums talking shit about the warfare system pre-release saying its going to be boring and getting downvoted into oblivion. And in the end I was right!

>>1453366
I remember criticizing HOI3's trailer video on Youtube, saying it wouldn't be any better than HOI2. Had like -1000 votes a few days later when I checked it. This was still when criticize wasn't shadowbanned on all online media. Turns out I was right for a long time and the shills turned on HOI3. Then ten years later I gave HOI3 a chance again and loved it haha.

>>1453367
To be fair, there are still some people who will claim that HOI3 is the gold standard of HOI.

>>1453368
Yeah it is now. Should probably check the catalog for another HOI3 thread to shit post my PARA/AC/ART/POL division composition in. At the time it was a complete flop on release. No one know what it was or what to do with it. But yes, it is actually the best HOI.

>>1448905
>Paradox is saying Victoria 3 is a profitable game
Considering the production budget of that game is 18 million, and they've sold 500k copies, 50 bucks a piece (that's 25 mil, if you are innumerate), it's not that hard to be profitable.
Welcome to the middle budget

>>1448982
>Game entirely made by interns and with total production budget of 2-2.5 mil
>Game sold nearly 200k copies at 30 bucks a piece (6 mil)
>Anon surprised it is profitable
Welcome to internship programming

>>1449019
Because what makes the game profitable or not is not the number of players, but number of units sold. If you can't grasp that, either you are 10 or genuinely brain-damaged.
I mean for fuck's sake, do I really need to walk you through this? TW3 has an achievement for finishing the starting, tutorial location. It takes about 90-100 minutes of gameplay to do so. Last time I've checked, only 28% of all users had that achievement.
But they STILL bought the game.

>>1449021
Vicky 3 is already more profitable than Imperator earned during its lifetime, so sure, they might pull the plug eventually, but not in incoming months

>>1449096
>Long-term economic planning
>Video game industry
>Or entertainment industry at all
Pick one

>>1449148
The actual problem PDX is facing is that they have too many of ALL jobs. Including the essentials, like coders (yes, I know how crazy it sounds). The real problem is that they have the text-book example of mismanaged HR department ever since going public. They hire huge amounts of people that they don't coordinate, so they end up having 10 different teams, each working on something entirely else, all underfunded, all undermanned, but in the same time there are 10 different teams, meaning they have twice as many people as they need.

>>1450608
As someone who plays they games since EU2 came out: it's kind of depressive listening to all the "nah, ignore the game for the first X years".
That didn't use to be a thing. It only started with EU3 that you had to wait until the game is finally good and playable.

Why all the hate for Vic 3? I really don't get it. I think it's a pretty fun game.

>>1454072
Yeah it sucks. I still get more enjoyed hours per dollar value out of paradox games than practically any other game out there so hey.

>>1448905
Of course it is profotable, I bet it cost pennies to make and it sold almost a million copies at full price.

so where does bloodlines 2 go, did paradox forgetto mention that they poured money to devs and all pdxcon marketing and now we are here?

>>1448982
epic exclusive for a year (more?), Tim probably paid for most of the costs

>>1449019
I bet even rome returned its development costs

>>1450608
i do not believe vic3 will ever be better than vic2

>>1455627
I respect your opinion, anon.

>>1454060
>>1454063
>what are taxes
Welcome to the high school civics class you flunked

>>1452424
That's not really the relevant part.

Look at it like this:
>Situation A: You have 10 players and they all play the game 24/7, so it shows that you have 10 active players per hour on average.
>Situation B: You have 200 players but they only play the game for one hour a week, and they often take a break of a month or more only to come back when there's a new update, so it shows that you have 1 active player per hour on average.
When looking at the Steam graph, it looks like A is 10x more successful than B. But when looking at sales, both of the base game and potential DLC, it turns out B is actually 20x more successful than A.

This is just to illustrate the difference and obviously not an accurate reflection of reality, but it shows how Steam graphs can be highly misleading. The fluctuations per hour don't even matter, as long as someone keeps interacting with the game from time to time, even if it's just one time per month, that's still player retention and still drives sales. How many unique players you have OVERALL is way more important than how many people are active at any given moment. The only real exception to this is multiplayer-only games, because those need a certain baseline of simultaneously active players to be playable at all.

Of course, the hard part is figuring out how little someone can interact with the game while still being engaged in some way. If I play the game for one hour every week, it's entirely reasonable to claim I'm still active. But if I don't play a game for 3 years before booting it up again for one last time, I can't really be counted as an active player even if I technically show up as active for that moment. But somewhere in between there is a vague line of players who aren't active enough to be statistically noteworthy on a Steam graph, but who are still engaged with the game in some way and would still download the next update or buy the next DLC.

>>1450022
It does in the long run, they cant milk a game without a playerbase. This is why even after 9 years hoi4 is still getting game changing updates. Hoi4 is getting updates made by their B-team that tramp over what vic 3 got in the last year.

Good retetion does make them more money but it's risky in case it flops

>>1454060
30% sales tax from steam + European taxes I'm 100% certain that they didnt break even at launch.

Also how the fuck did they waste 18 million like that??

>>1450538
sounds like a whole lot of cope

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>>1457069
Even though HOI4 is shit it still gets an audience since its a World War 2 game, for Victoria 3 to succeed it needs to actually be good since its a timeline that people generally don't care about
>>1457075
According to vgi it made over 30 mil in revenue already, don't know where the 18 mil budget comes from

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Holy shit a Faggot Bavarian is not holding back
If shills like him can turn on Paradox then is Wiz in serious trouble?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTT2UcT2190

>>1457646
You didn't even watch the video apparently

>>1457698
Just have now
what a faggot Bavarian is
Can't believed he click baited me
I guess once a shill always a shill

>>1457646
He just understands that public opinion of Vic3 is negative so he's been putting "IT'S DEAD!?" or "IT'S OVER" on his videos bait people into watching his milquetoast complaint videos.

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>>1453364
>>1451069
>>1449036

>>1457646
contract ran out

>>1457646
Clickbait. It's still a fucking shill.

>>1449119
Germans

>>1449410
Jesus.
Who allowed this? Obama? Now it's too late to free the medias without a fight

>>1457962
>muh smol bidness!
The problem with monopolies is that they are in hands of private investors, instead of the people.

How is skylines endless if they're making a skylines 2?

>>1458224
People are still buying Vic 2 despite them making Vic 3.

>>1458543
why was this post deleted?