DLCs, Downloadable Content, for games are usually innocent enough, some extra content for a price, usually about half of the original game. The Dark Souls and Elden Ring DLCs are great examples. But some companies take things further, so far that the mere price tag scares people away. So many, and at a 20$ price tag, that the total price is in the hundreds. Allow me to introduce the uninitiated, to Paradox Interactive.

Paradox is a truly unique company, they’ve probably made at least one game you recognize if you’ve been on the internet for long enough. Cities Skylines, Hearts of Iron, Stellaris, Crusader Kings, just to name a few. These games, more than any other I’ve seen, are riddled with DLC. Let’s look at Europa Universalis IV (EU4) for an example, one of their most popular titles among history nerds. It came out in 2014, with the 5th installment on the way. If you guessed how many DLCs there were, you would almost certainly be wrong. The answer is 37. 37. Let that sink in. If you bought the base game and all the DLC, you would be down $475. Now hold on, that might be unfair, some of that is purely cosmetic DLC, which you may not care about, I certainly don’t. So instead, what about the bundle that includes the base game and all content-filled, actual expansion, DLC? $333. Not much better. This price tag is absolutely insane. That is more than a Nintendo switch. An entire console costs less than the full version of one game. 

It should not be to anyone’s surprise that people do not like this. What has been dubbed the “Paradox DLC model” is harshly criticized, even by the company’s biggest fans. There’s a reason why almost every DLC has terrible steam reviews, because every review is mad that they had to buy it. But then, you may ask, why do people just keep buying it? Surely people wouldn’t support such a thing, you may say. You see, there’s just one problem. These games are really, really good. For the most part, at least. Let’s go back to EU4.

First off, you can play as any country that existed at the time of 1444, meaning you alone can take any nation in the medieval period all the way to the fall of Napoleon, where the game ends at 1821. For history nerds, this is an insanely cool concept. But dig a little deeper, and you realize what owning all the DLC gets you. Custom events, missions,- goals that the game rewards you for reaching- decisions such as forming a new country, and general content for almost every country. The On-the-rise Aztec empire? Absolutely. A Japanese daimyo? Why not? Tibetan chieftains, German city-states, African tribes, Mongol hordes, native Americans, the Pope himself, you get my point. All of these have in-depth content just for them. It’s that meticulously crafted game design that keeps Paradox in business. The games are infamously buggy sometimes, but when they aren’t getting in your way, you can find yourself with endless replay ability, even though the entire game’s graphics is just staring at a map.

There is one last thing I should mention, however, something that you may have thought about earlier. This is great and all, but I don’t have 400 dollars. Well neither do I, but I’ve lost hundreds of hours, and with all DLC. And no, I don’t mean pirating, I mean the most controversial decision Paradox may have ever made. The DLC subscription. That $400 price tag, the one with absolutely every DLC, not even just the important ones? How about you get all that, but instead of $400 now, you pay $7 a month. Wait, hold on, only 7 dollars? Yeah, if that sounds too good to be true, fair enough, but it is. No strings attached, just 7 dollars. It would take you almost 5 years to have paid the full price, and that’s assuming you only pay for one month at a time instead of multiple at a time. If you paid for 3 months at a time for 15 dollars, it would take you almost 7 years to pay the full price, which is over 2/3’s of how long the game has even been out. Considering a new DLC comes out every 6-9 months for another 20$, and you get that automatically, you would almost never catch up to the schmucks who just paid $400 dollars over time, as the DLC came out. Old players were, and are, not happy about this at all. It almost feels like a scam. But the new players? Well, they can finally enjoy it without paying the same price as an Xbox X or Ps5.