Following fan backlash over Europa Universalis IV’s Leviathan DLC, which wound up the worst-rated launch on Steam of all time, the director of the studio responsible has apologised to fans for not just Leviathan’s poor quality, but that of some other recent releases as well.
Posting on the company’s forums, Paradox Tinto manager Johan Andersson accepts personal responsibility for people’s long-standing issues with the game’s DLC, especially “a long trail of low quality releases.”
Leviathan was one of the worst releases we have had, and follows a long trail of low quality releases starting back with Golden Century for EU4.
As the Studio Manager and Game Director, at the end of the day, this is my responsibility, so I have to apologize for this. This is entirely my fault.
I should have delayed the start of the development of Leviathan until we had all the resources that were needed, and they had time to properly onboard on the project. We should have announced a break in the development of EU4 after the Emperor release, until we had a team ready to start designing and working early in 2021.
We are partially changing our plans for the rest of the year. We had originally planned to fix all legacy bugs before we stop developing further expansions for EU4. Now we are accelerating these plans, and also making sure that the community will be getting them frequently.
The 1.31.3 patch is planned to be out this week, and the next patch after that we aim to release either at the end of may or early june, and then we aim to release several more patches for the rest of the year.
This is of course a rough first expansion for the team and the studio, but it’s far from the end. We have recruited a set of great individuals, with a huge passion for the game, to form Paradox Tinto, giving us a bright future for Europa Universalis.
It’s rare to see such a direct apology in this business, something fans in the forum seem appreciative of. Guess we’ve got the rest of 2021 to see if Tinto can pull this one out of the fire and get some of these expansions in a more presentable state.