I’m right there with you. I absolutely hate Paradox’s DLC policy and I’m guessing they lose a ton of paying clients the moment they hit the store page and get a 200-500€ price tag for the full experience, or even over 100€ for just the best hits for a really old game. I know they have mouths to feed, but i really don’t like the way they do it and how they abuse their position of niche games nobody else makes. Nevertheless, even though you may choose not to purchase their expansions, you still have extremely healthy modding communities to carry you over.

Still, i wasn’t coming so much from the angle that it’s a smaller company providing better value than larger companies, rather showing to the OP that there are non multiplayer games that easily can provide over 500 hours of entertainment regarding the slighly off topic matter presented on the latter part of their comment. Of note is the fact that they don’t use grinding mechanics to do it, for the most part (x series can be a little grindy in some aspects, but not overly), which is the mark of how incompetent devs try to get more “entertainment” hours out of their games.

Stellaris, civ v, oxygen not included, city skylines, x3/rebirth/4, workers and resources: soviet republic, kerbal space program, rimworld, crusader kings 2 and 3.

Basically anything civilization/city/base/colony builder is my jam and some of them have over 2000 hours over the years. I like building perfect societies and roleplay how people live in them in my head while i do it. It’s one of the ways i relax and express creativity.

I really doubt any sort of US action could lead to the EU fracturing.

If anything, having to deal with the US has brought us closer together. On one side there’s Trump making a fool of himself and of the US. On the other side there’s Musk, thinking he can take on European unions and actually win, because he thinks he’s still in the US, and in the middle there’s what i like to call the sheep pen of tech companies. We shear their wool for fines on privacy violations every couple of months to fund our regulatory organs.

These games are so old i can almost hear the clack-clack of the CRT monitor changing resolution as the game launches.

Well Ubisoft did say gamers should start getting used to not owning Ubisoft games.

So far, so good.

Who would’ve thought that an industry that disregarded and actively attacked and insulted their viewer/reader base, who gained a fame for 10/10ing all games under the sun and folding to the most miniscule of complaints from pressure groups would end up not having viewers/readers at all ? Not to mention hiring people who hate video games, can’t play them and/or plagiarize footage from youtube to showcase the game as journalists.

Let me play the tiniest violin concerto for you guys. Now roll over and let youtubers take your industry.

What’s most frustrating is 5+ year old games whose biggest discount is 15%, clogging up my wishlist. Some devs are really hurting themselves by being so stingy.

Yeah but it’s Paradox. The only DLC you really need are the 5 or so that actually have a positive steam rating.

Yeah thanks for the heads up, I’ll buy it in a year after release, when it’s patched, for 50% discount on a steam sale. Or maybe in two years foe that botched launch apology hit discount of 70%.