Paradox’s new Crusader Kings 3 Coronation DLC has launched to a “Very Negative” reception on Steam. The $5 DLC adds the new Coronations and Oaths features which allow players to legitimise their rule via official events.
The small DLC was already criticised for its minor amount of content, but the expansion also launched in a broken, buggy state. On launch, players have discovered the Oaths system is completely busted with players failing oaths despite succeeding their requirements which usually results in a huge penalty.
As Paradox’s latest Crusader Kings 3 DLC took fire for its broken state and miniscule amount of content, the company wheeled out the game’s QA Manager, Riad, to apologise to fans for the issues. In the apology, Paradox claimed that the released paid DLC was not given “the resources and attention it needed, and the result was a release that let you down”.
Riad explained that Paradox is currently “pouring enormous effort” into the game’s upcoming All Under Heaven major expansion with “basically every resources” poured into the series’ biggest expansion ever. The QA Manager said the entire situation was “unfair” both to the small team working on the new DLC with extremely limited resources, and the fans that Paradox charged.
“Many of us on the team, myself included, joined Paradox as fans of the games,” Riad told fans of Crusader Kings 3. “Meeting you at events…hearing your stories, and seeing how much Crusader Kings 3 means to you is what makes this work so meaningful,” said Riad. “That’s why it hurts so much when we f**k up like this. We don’t take your trust for granted, and I want to do my best to ensure we earn it back.”
Crusader Kings 3 devs are working on another patch to fix the major issues in the game’s Coronations DLC, mainly the broken Oaths system that punishes players for fulfilling their requirements. There is no public release date for that patch.
“Thank you for holding us accountable and for continuing to care about this game as much as we do,” the QA Manager told fans online. “We will do better.”
Crusader Kings 3 is far from the only Paradox project to release in a buggy, unfinished state, and not even the only DLC release from the company. Earlier this year, Stellaris’ Biogenesis DLC and 4.0 patch released in a terrible state with only 37% positive reviews during its launch.
“The DLC? Great! Amazing! One of the best they made yet for any of their games,” one Steam reviewer wrote at the time. “The update? A lag fest with constant crashes.”
Paradox, once again, apologised to fans for the broken launch with game director Stephen Muray saying: “During the lead-up to the release, I was confident that we would be able to finish the revamp and clean up the most critical bugs. We fell short of that goal, and we’re committed to continuing to fix things until the 4.0 release is in the state it needs to be in.”
Furthermore, there’s the launch of Cities Skylines 2, a game published but not developed by Paradox. At the time of writing, the game still sits at Mixed reviews, but the game was a launch disaster with little content, horrendous performance, and a slew of major bugs that ruined the experience.
Unfortunately, this release structure of releasing broken and fixing later has become more common than not for Paradox titles, and it doesn’t seem to be improving. Every issue comes with an apology and a statement of intent to do better, but another issue constantly pops up, and it’s tiring for fans of brilliant, but often broken, games.
