Paradox keeps having to apologize for quality issues

Paradox Interactive has apologized to players of Crusader Kings 3 for the quality issues of its latest expansion, Coronations. The DLC was not only pushed out with several major bugs, but egregious balance problems connected to its content that made players doubt that any testing had been conducted ahead of launch.

Alongside a hotfix to correct some of these issues, Paradox published an apology post written by the responsible quality assurance manager. 

The contents – unfortunately, for Paradox fans – will appear familiar by now: “I’m sorry,” the QA manager wrote. “‘Coronations’ was not up to the standard you deserve, and that’s on me. As the QA Manager for the studio, it is my job to ensure that our releases meet the QA vision we have set out. It is clear we didn’t give the project the resources and attention it needed, and the result was a release that let you down. You have every right to be upset, and I want to acknowledge that openly.”

Most of the available resources, the post went on to say, were currently being poured into the upcoming All Under Heaven DLC, a substantial expansion that will expand the borders of the map all the way to Japan.

“Though I am very proud of the development team, and really amazed with what they did with such limited resources, we didn't assign enough people to oversee the release and meet our quality demands, and that was clearly unfair to both them and you, our fans,” the post said.

Paradox wants to implement several measures to avoid future occurrences such as this. It will be more stringent about last-minute change, which apparently caused a lot of the trouble fans clashed with, and dedicate more time to full-length playthroughs during development.

While presenting concrete steps to improve the situation is always good and welcome, players have heard these phrases before, especially last year when there was an entire string of faulty releases. Back then, Paradox leadership gave a self-critical interview in which it admitted that things had been going wrong, but promised that steps would be taken to rectify the situation. 

Nearly a year later, the company is back to churning out apology posts, which is a sad state of affairs for one of the most unique developers in the industry. Player trust is a valuable currency and Paradox has been very liberal at spending it.

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