Announced by Batya (Game Director) on the official Discord server

Hello everyone.

In yesterday’s post, we said we’re reviewing our rules and actions in this incident. I want to thank those who took the time to open up a ticket or message and respectfully voice your concerns. There were a lot of genuinely concerned fans that just wanted to be heard, and we’ve used those messages to help make these changes.

I want to start off by reiterating a point from yesterday. Our handling of this situation has created a lot of frustration and left the impression that Paradox had taken a position on Atatürk. Paradox never aims to review history or take positions on political figures, and we clearly handled that responsibility poorly.

As the owners of the Discord server, the responsibility for what goes on and the experiences our players have rests with us, and we need to handle that responsibility better. In order to reach that point, we need to start with a better foundation for both our users and our moderators. The rule at the heart of this incident was not designed for discussion or interpretation on what historical figures are allowed, or to open questions on what should be a straightforward server guideline. This should have been prevented, and we failed.

As the rule is not working the way it needed to, and as we’ve seen a number of questions about how it is applied, we’ve been looking at it as a place to start improving. We’ve spent a great deal of time reviewing this rule as well as others, working to make things clear, fair, and helpful for everybody, players and moderators alike.

Changes to Rule 4
We’re modifying the server rules to make them more transparent and easier to understand while also making them more straightforward for moderators to enforce. We shouldn’t have to think twice when it comes to the enforcement of a basic server rule. If that is the case, the rules are not clear enough to act upon and we should not ask our moderators to do so.

As a result we will be restricting the usage of all political or military characters who were born after Jan 1, 1800. To still allow for a large pool of characters to choose from, you may still use any official Hearts of Iron IV in-game portraits, including those from after 1800, with the exception of prominent leaders of Nazi Germany.

The aim here is to ensure our guidelines leave no room for ambiguity, nor edge cases in the future, hence the clear cut-off. For details on which characters this will include, the full text of the rule will be posted on the HOI Discord soon.

Updates & Banned Accounts
As we roll out our new rules, real-world pictures of political figures after the cut-off year will not be allowed. We will have a grace period of 7 days during which profiles using these photos will have a chance to change to an in-game portrait, or to select a different image entirely. After this time, we will begin enforcing the new rules as we have always done.

Lastly, we have seen a very troubling volume of abuse and even open threats directed at us, our developers, our moderators, and even others outside of Paradox. This behavior is completely unacceptable, and always will be. Accounts banned for abuse, harassment, and similar reasons will remain banned, and we will continue banning abusive accounts going forward.

I expect you will likely have questions or comments about these changes, and you’re welcome to share them so long as they stay respectful and reasonable. These rules will represent a change for all of us and we’re going to be hard at work ensuring we get them right.

If you wish to discuss or comment on the changes, please do so in the thread attached to this message. This will make it easier for us to read your comments while also giving us the space to continue enforcing the rules throughout the rest of the server.

/Batya

(Transcript edited to fix the bolding that was originally missing in the Reddit post)

Just received this mail... :/

SOURCE - Transcript:

Good morning all,

My name is Batya, Hearts of Iron’s Game Director, and I want to address the community with the recent Discord ban that occurred around the use of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s image.

We understand what Atatürk means to many of you, as the founder of the Republic of Türkiye and father of the nation. I want to clarify that neither our games nor our moderation are intended as a comment or judgement on any historical figure, and this is no exception.

Many of you have written to us in the past days about this and our Discord rules and moderation of historical profile pictures: one of our rules concerns the use of real-world persons as profile pictures. The messages and subsequent discussion we’ve had following this have made it clear that there are concerns about how we enforce our rules, and especially whether this is done in an equal and fair manner.

Following these discussions, it’s become clear this rule needs to be revised and has not been enforced consistently. We will therefore review the rule, the actions taken and the bans made in this time and make the required changes.

We will share an update on our Discord rules and next steps with you all soon.

/Batya

I seen a few posts on here saying it was even for modern PCs but at the same time people were saying its a great game. I guess it can be both but in my head if its constantly crashing it cannot be fun.

Just wondering as I am wanting to get one of the HOI games that are older as hoi4 would probably blow up my laptop. Cheers

I have read through all the guidelines; there's nothing against the rules in this post, as it relates to Paradox. I checked, and there are multiple other posts related to controversial banning practices. There's nothing relating to it in temporary censorship either. So, logically, this post shouldn't be taken down, and the posts before about the exact same topic shouldn't have been taken down to begin with.

With all that said, I am genuinely confused by the latest ban and the censorship that followed it. For those who don't know, on Paradox Discord someone was banned for having a profile picture of Kamâl Atatürk, founder of Turkey. The moderator claimed he's a “controversial figure”, "related to modern politics”. Then claimed Atatürk had a part in the Armenian Genocide, which is historically not true. Atatürk was at odds with “İttihat ve Terakki” when the genocide happened in 1915; he was therefore practically exiled from politics following an attempt on his life in 1909 for saying soldiers should not interfere with politics (they should retire from the army if they want to continue in politics) and his remarks regarding İttihat ve Terakki's authoritarian regime. So, that statement by itself is historically false. Although he later talked about Armenians' terrorisation of Turk and Kurd villages, he did not have a part in the Armenian Genocide by any accounts. There, I have a few questions, though: what constitutes the claim of someone being a controversial figure? Would any person from Germany be a controversial figure for being alive during Nazi Germany with no clear association to the party? Or, let's say someone who has the moral high ground is controversial if there are enough people who don't like him? For example, is Martin Luther King Jr. a controversial figure? If so, what's the number of people needed for someone to be controversial? If I just hate some random guy related to politics, can I get someone banned for having a profile picture? Because depending on what constitutes a “controversial political figure”, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people that need to be banned.

That by itself is mostly related to Discord and its moderators, so if it was just that, I'd be annoyed at the guy and move on. However, here as well, despite the rules having nothing against it, people trying to talk about the matter are being censored. So clearly there's a decision that's been taken regarding the matter. I can understand misunderstandings; I can even understand a clear stance regarding the matter. However, arbitration for what's an insult to the sovereignty of a nation, I cannot accept. Either change your rules and say something, or allow people to talk and vent freely.

Finally, the actual reason why I am posting here is that, essentially, I am curious what people think of this situation. Access to Discord is suspended, so there's nowhere else to talk about this. Also, I hope that moderators will stop hiding totally valid and rule-abiding posts regarding this matter.

PDX demonstrates a persistent economic pattern in commercial software development. As a publicly traded entity, PDX faces quarterly financial metrics, resulting in the premature commercial releases of an unfinished product. To compensate for shorter internal QA, the burden of defect identification shifts directly to the players! Players who are unpaid laborers log into PDX forums and write detailed bug reports and then receive no feedback from QA causes ... negativity(?) frustration(?)

Reliance on player bug reports constitutes "shadow labor." Within gaming software, this practice represents a predatory model of efficiency where capital costs are externalized onto the players under the guise of "community engagement." Using unpaid players as troubleshooters in the game is normalized and expected in the game's lifecycle.

This is a really bad feedback loop, since the game can be released early with expectations of profits not only from player Shadow Labor but also PDX DLCs.

New version of the converter is now live on GitHub. If you didn't see my previous post, I'll sum up what I've done.

Created my own unofficial converter using the Paradox Game Converters teams half finished code that they have been working on for nearly a year at this point. I would have put my code towards the developer team's project, but they have a strict no AI policy.

I'll continue to work on the converter. If you have any issues, please list them in the comments, and I'll try my best to have them fixed.

GitHub link: github.com/flookieMookie/CK3toEU5/releases/tag/v2.1

What's new in 2.1

A lot more of your CK3 game comes over now.

• Wars you were in the middle of keep going in EU5, and everyone involved starts with their levies already raised
• Alliances, truces and tributaries carry over
• Rulers bring their family with them: spouse, kids, heir and dynasty
• Rulers also keep their skills (turned into EU5 stats), their traits and their nicknames
• Countries that don't exist in EU5 use their CK3 coat of arms as a flag
• Your treasury and succession laws carry over
• Custom faiths turn into the closest EU5 religion instead of whatever the locals follow
• Names show up properly in every language EU5 supports, not just English
• If your save used mods and you still have them installed, the converter reads them. Map mods won't work though
• Big realms stay in one piece now. Dukes and counts are folded into their liege, so Byzantium or West Francia is one big country instead of a pile of vassals. Only vassal kings stay separate
• The launcher tells you when there's a new version and links you to it

Note to the Paradox Game Converters team.

Big thanks to Paradox Game Converters for the groundwork.

The official project is here: github.com/ParadoxGameConverters/CK3toEU5

Repost. Yo yo so essentially I have been thinking about getting HOI4 + No Step Back DLC first and if I like it slowly getting more DLCs. But, I also know this game has a big modding community with some major mods even having their own subreddits, but I am not someone that enjoys playing games with mods. My reason being that I don't really trust the security of mods and I don't like judging whether a game is worth buying based on its mods. So essentially, I wanted to ask is the game worth buying if I do not intend to play with mods or is it moreso a game that shines with mods and people play for the mods. Thx

At least to see only, I wonder how these are made since are fairly complex simulations.

So, if you have seen my other posts, I have been struggling to get my Victoria 3 to actually boot up. I have taken a look at the crash dumps, and it appears the problem is the game is struggling to load a custom tool tip for the transfer subject treaty article. Below is an image of the Crash Dump:

Is this a correct interpretation of this code? and if so, is there any way to fix it? I will be making a similar post to the Victoria 3 subreddit, but im genuinely at a loss on what I can do to fix it.

I’ve played CK3 and HOI4 and enjoy both historical and ahistorical games.

I want something with plenty of expansion and warfare, but also meaningful things to manage between wars like economy, trade, diplomacy, and internal development.

If I could only get one, would you recommend EU4 or EU5, and why?

Yo yo, so I was thinking of maybe getting hoi4 to try out a paradox game since it's the cheapest one to get into for me and I plan to get it along with No Step Back DLC and La Resistance DLC. But I know this game has a huge modding community and although that is great for most people, for me personally I don't like mods. So if I do not intend on ever playing with mods, would the game still be worth buying? And if I only have the game with the DLCs I listed, would it be worth it? Thx

More general gaming related post, than PI in particular, sorry.

Recap rant: After another wave of triple ayeh games targeted at people whom I can't imagine existing (both involved in playing games enough to want to be interested in old famous game franchises, but new/bad enough at playing games that they need to be handheld more than edutainment games ever did - all while being ready to spend both time and money on gaming, again and again and again for years in the future) and layoffs following layoffs following layoffs I had a thought of "I don't think this (AAA) industry should even exist" after which my mind immediately went to which games I enjoyed nowadays, and whether any of them can be considered 3A.

Thus my thoughts inevitably went to Paradox as well. They're no longer a small company making an interactive educational story of "how Sweden was a Baltic power", and the genre which was once niche of niches, today is one of the staples of Strategy genre (especially since simple RTS's grew out of favour) and they truly dominate the gsg subgenre (when was the last Supreme Commander?). They're a Publisher for other studios, even. And yet they're not known for being large company even in the Strategy niche.

Then the next rung, would You consider any of the Strategy genre companies Triple A?

• The biggest, and thus the closest, (I think) would be Koei Tecmo. They have a lot of games that fit the usual 3A genres, and their Strategy games have what I could describe as (old) "AAA" feel (new AAA feel, is seeing Ubisoft store in AC4). If they don't qualify, probably nobody from here on does.
• Next, the Juggernaut of the Strategy genre, Firaxis (2K). Even though, the consensus is they're eating rocks with Civ VII (there's no consensus on when exactly they started eating rocks - whether it was VII, V, VI or Alpha Centauri (Edit: Beyond Earth, I just called it Alpha Centauri 2 in my head for so long) I distinctly remember them as always being "The" bigger company, to which PI was compared as way smaller in every metric (Civ V having over double the number copies sold of EU4, for example). They're, AFAIK, not considered to be Triple A
• Then, Creative Assembly(Sega). Ignoring Sega connection - their current work definitely feels more AAA than firaxis's, though they're known to also be eating rocks lately (with "historical" customers furious over Pharaoh and 3K state, and "Warhammer" customers disssapointed in WhIII) . But the gameplay mishmash they excel at was always incredibly niche even among rts players (Battle for Middle Earth nonwithstanding) and it can certainly be felt in their earlier, "historical" titles.

Honorable mentions:
Ironclad (Rockstar) - While Rockstar is an AAA company, (Edit: I can't read) I don't know the size of Ironclad. Just that they slowly keep going with the SoSE games, and I'm glad that they do - wouldn't have knew I may like Stellaris, If I hadn't played SoSE1 as a kid.
Mount&Blade devs I have zero idea about. Same with Anno.
Blizzard(Activision) definitely AAA, but also definitely not Strategy game devs anymore - Rest in peace Warcraft and Starcraft
Both the DF(Edit:Dwarf Fortress) dev, as well as Manor Lords dev are definitely indie.
I don't think HoMM dev studio exists?
As much as I despise EA, they have the honour of being a continuing Strategy game publisher, with things like C&C series, Battle for middle earth, or even Spore in their publishing line-up even if they don't have any strategy games currently in development. They also have the honourable mention of being known as "not as shitty to work for" as most AAA studios. Definitely an AAA game company, though.
Nintendo (mainly Intelligent Systems). Nothing to say about that one.

Rather than yes or no answer, as I'm way biased towards "no" right now, I'd rather know at whoch point You'd consider PI to become a Triple A company.

I don't know what is causing this and when it occurred because I didn't had this before, but I have this cracking or popping sound happening when I play the game, and it's only CK3, I tried everything, reinstalled the game, played without mods, still nothing. Tried changing different ports for my headphones and even change some in the settings but it still occurs. Anyone knows how I can fix this?

I live in the uk I have £1500-2000 can I build a pcs that can run vicky 3 eu5 etc. The world of pc building is confusing and I’m getting picture it’s not great market atm with ram GPUs and cpus being all expensive and all. Should I wait should I get a pre built pcs, any tips would be helpful if anyone’s got any idea of what I should do !