Paradox Interactive Reviews 100

toxic
they ban you for replying on old threads. and when you reply you get a notice that the thread is old but its ok to reply, then they ban you for doing what they told you was ok to do.

They riuned thier games including stellaris and after paying about $1000 in all content over the years and playing for years i get perma banned from paradox for calling out thier game designers. the newest screw up are massive they dont listen to anyone with real interest in the game i recomend boycotting paradox permanently and put them out of buisness at this point. they dont want any negative feed back at all, they just want the fanboys who use every mod available to make the game super easy verse players like me who refuses to use mods cos it degrades the game into garbage. then again paradox seems to love garbage games as im seeing so time to stop giving them any money

the most worst publisher ever. the way you treat your paying customers at paradoxplaza is inaceptable. the moderators over there are way more worst than at reddit. they make you completely stay away of any products published by paradox. incompetent and unprofessional in every thinkable way.

Played Age of Wonders 4 for over a year now with no problems. Now it won't start, and I can't reinstall.

I love your games. I played them for more than 10.000 hours at the moment. But you are advertising buying plushies from makeship. They send me broken conquistador plushie and acknowledged, it is broken and told me they will refund. I never received any money after the PayPal case was closed. Absolutely untrustworthy. I paid 35$ for rubbish because paradox vouched for them as a partner of paradox. I invested more than 500€ in games and this is not the kind of payback I wanted.

I own Prison Architect through steam. Haven't played in a while or since Paradox bought the game.

Reinstalled and tried to play, the game simply would not launch. I suspect it's tied to their own Paradox Launcher. Went through their support, saying they were no help would be flattering.

I now own a game I cannot play due to no fault on my end.

I played Cities: Skylines 1 on my Xbox, and it was quite good.
Once I wanted to get the new CS 1 (Cities: Skylines 2) on my Mac, I couldn't. I tried on Steam, but it is unavailable. Why is there not a version for Mac? At least give a reason. You have probably lost thousands of clients. Each client is for 66.99. Please add!

I have had 3 dealings with Paradox Interactive:
1) CK3 - on PS/5: A bad experience. I believe this was more down to the studio Lab42 after a LinkedIn conversation with Daniel Velasquez Araque. I believed the marketing bs of their video for the game/platform. It had a fraction of the functionality of the PC version. Bought via Sony Playstation store online.. I repeatedly asked for an in game session with the developers and someone from Sony to illustrate the issues. This all fell on deaf ears. (Case numbers 03544506,03552059,03527430 - starting Apr 2nd 2022 - date ordered thru 26th Jun 2023). After persisting for months I finally started to get my head around how to cope with the limitations only to find updates completely broke the game and it would continuously crash rendering the game unusable. Order Number 330198464007 - cost £59.99. No refund was ever issued.
2) Stellaris on a PC (8th Jun 2024 and all DLCs). By far my best experience. I would rate this 4 out of 5. But even there, it was not ideal - partly due to Intel wifi drivers and getting constantly disconnected/given misleading messages logged in as a different user. I posted in their forums back on Aug 2nd 2024 for help : "How do I go about creating an updated visualisation of all the technologies including all the DLCs?" as JGFMK3 and nobody responded. I tried reaching out on LinkedIn to Stephen Muray and Byron Aytoun too - and they never connected/messaged me.
3) Cities Skylines + 13 DLCs (Oct 2024)- downloaded from Microsoft Store.
This time around - out of pocket for £211.91 (+ £I2.79 from Humble - who have just agreed on a refund). I relied on Microsoft Co-Pilot before pulling the trigger on the purchase. it gave me false advice. The game was a Console backport, but listed as a PC (Windows 10 game). All this can be seen if you Google on "Why aren't digital downloads from Microsoft Store done with trial license that you can then buy?" - again JGFMK3/Jeremy Flowers. I played this game for less than 4 hours and uninstalled it - exasperated at how nothing worked correctly - joining feeder roads to roundabouts with desired curvature, power plants not being able to be placed next to roads, and the camera positioning done with keys was so clunky - except the After Dark which I couldn't utilise.
If you are reading this and are in a similar situation of not being given a refund, reach out to me on LinkedIn for the CK3/PS5 or Cities Skylines Windows 10. It would be nice to launch class action lawsuit to counter what I feel is entrapment/deceptive marketing to recoup our money and be rewarded for our wasted time. There should be the equivalent of a lemon law for software.

I'm done supporting scum who want people to pay $400 to finally get a playable game. I have enjoyed their games for years but I just don't trust them anymore. I'm done, I'm not buying anything from them ever again.

It took them like 4 years just to make Stellaris barely playable and they're still ironing out problems which is great, except those fixes come in the form of $25 DLC that includes other game breaking issues. It's like there is no stable game, it's always in between being broken and being fixed forcing you to buy the next bread crumb.

Then you look at city skyline, the new victoria game, everything is trash. Completely broken, completely lacking in features, completely unplayable for at least 5 years. It's just not acceptable and they need to quick the narcissistic capitalist crap. They should be ashamed of existing.

Used to be a good company, Now lie about their products to defraud users and refuse to issue refunds to some customers while giving refunds for the same reason to others.
Lie about fault fixing to provide social media content creators what they want instead of paying customers so they look better and can con more people
Avoid this company at all cost they are now no better than EA

I absolutely love
cities skylines
Prison architect
Stellaris
And CK3

I purchased every DLC for the 1st 2 however my problem is the sequels
I was Hella hyped for cities skylines 2 then it gets delayed for a year on console and I've been waiting for pa2 since April and that has also been delayed. To me it seems they are too ambitious either having too good graphics or too early release dates

Sick of their buggy games and terrible customer service.

Their greedy DLCs are annoying too. Grown to hate this company

I like Paradox. They brought so much to the world of strategy games, it's crazy. Ok, the game + DLCs for over 100+ bucks is overkill. But let's be honest : paying 100+ bucks for thousands of hours of gameplay is too much ? Of course not. And then nothing obliges you to buy them... Anyway, all these negative reviews give a bad image of Paradox and it is not deserved.
Ps : I am convinced that among those who complain, some buy AAAs for 70 bucks without complaining about the price...

you're telling me that i need to pay over £100 just to get features that should be FREE? instead of simply updating a PAID game and giving us content for free, you decided to make DLC for features that are NEEDED to enjoy the game? even hitler would think that this is messed up.

The company is making billions, yet their online community is still managed as if it was some cozy indie hideout; by volunteers from the player base. Naturally, this attracts people of low character that will abuse mod rights for their personal vendetta. Basically their only employed community manager and admin, DebbieElla, is on maternity leave so nobody is responsible and nobody can be addressed for issues that come up.

They sell what on the surface look like great games with depth, they are even often fun to play, but then you run into missing features which are only available by a DLC purchase. There's always another DLC purchase from Paradox. Once you learn a Paradox game, you've basically learned them all and just repeating the same experience over and over. That's when you realize Paradox games just aren't all that great. It's just the same AI in new clothes.

That being said, I enjoyed the first few Paradox games I bought, until I ran into missing features requiring DLC purchases. Then I would quit and move on to the next, repeat process. Their games are fun, for the limited time you'll play them before you must invest in DLC. You might even forgive missing features for a while, but you will - hopefully - eventually realize you're just shoveling cash to make the game into what it was promised to be. That's the problem with Paradox games.

Generally the DLCs cost quite a bit but they also offer good content that is well thought-out and they keep the games alive and fresh for years.
I understand they gotta make money to pay devs, and I'd rather buy a solid DLC then some copy paste content!

scam company - avoid at all costs!!

Over years, games produced by Paradox have dramatically reduced in quality and, even game titles which were safe were crucified by this current iteration of the company, following profits over substance.

Myself and others (counting more by the second) are looking for other developers to produce the same game types without the leeching monetary DLC policy. There's many more to choose and Paradox will not be getting another penny from me!