Notes

Paradox, Leviathan and Toxic Behavior

Over the years, Paradox Interactive has become one of the most recognizable brands when it comes to strategy games. With several franchises of this genre in their portfolio, each release they release can attract the attention of a huge number of players, but the problem is that the expectations created by these people can cause huge disappointment, and this is what happened with the addition to Europa Universalis IV.


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Source: Disclosure / Paradox Interactive

Eligible Leviathan and arrived in the game on April 27, it wasn’t long before fans started discovering just how bad the content is, with complaints ranging from structural issues to poor balance, obviously moving on to all sorts of bugs, such as one that prevents AI building monuments.

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Sold for just under 40 BRL, the situation was so critical that the add-on became the worst release on Steam, with just 7% positive user reviews. In an attempt to put out the fire, the studio manager even issued an apology (which was later removed) and Paradox rushed to release the update, but even after making a few fixes, the damage was done.

For some people who have been following the game since its premiere in 2013, it was the publisher’s mistake to leave development to one of the people from the new studio founded in Barcelona. So, completely ignoring the fact that most of the time we have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes, and certainly not knowing reports of how lame the professionals behind Paradox’s Quality Control are, some cowards left the site criticism and went on personal attacks, in the case of those who work for a Spanish developer.

Then, outraged by community protests, another arm of the publisher decided to quit, and it happened via the development journal of another popular franchise, Hearts of Iron 4. Published by the game’s content designer, he says one of the reasons that prompted him to work in Paradox, there was openness to direct conversations with players, but the price is getting too high.


“As many of you have pointed out, very little, if not years, have appeared in these forums in the last few months, if not years. The reason for this is that we often come across a culture of debate where it’s not fun to be a part, where it is taken for granted that programmers are lazy or incompetent, and where everything we do is seen through that lens. Spending months of your life creating something is not only incredibly demoralizing, just to see the people you did it tear it to shreds, it’s also debates that lead nowhere. We are not being paid to search abusive websites for a few scraps of opinion, and such opinions are disregarded. “


The statement goes on to say that it is not the intention of Paradox employees to flatter or have a forum where decisions made by the team cannot be discussed. That’s why they think player feedback is important, but if they want to have access to a channel of communication with people who create titles they love so much, it’s the fan’s responsibility to build a place where professionals feel welcome, where misunderstandings work productively.

The example he gave was the difficulty they have in accessing material written in languages they don’t understand, such as the 1936 Turkish Railway Plan. Presented in a local book and given to them by the player, they used the information in the update that the game received and, according to the author of the publication, it costs people nothing to assume that the developers are acting in good faith, after all, none of them wake up in the morning and go to work with the intention of doing a bad job.

Because it is the lack of empathy and the assumption that the internet is a no man’s land that has made it increasingly common for people to be stupid about those who work on game development. Of course, no one likes to get something and concludes that the result falls short of expectations, but that should never be a motivation to trick someone into personal attacks or to believe that they have the right to threaten others.

I do not mean that the company should not be criticized for making mistakes, which in the case of the Leviathan Paradox was not even the first of them. The problem is that there are several ways to express our dissatisfaction, and it is sad to see how much of the so-called “gaming community” is toxic, immature and irrelevant.


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