Paradox Interactive has announced that it's hiking the prices of certain pieces of Crusader Kings 3 DLC. Northern Lords and Fate of Iberia will be raised from $6.99 to $12.99, which Paradox says will better reflect their value (and the value of other so-called "flavor packs") going forward.
Why is Paradox raising the prices of these Crusader Kings 3 DLC packs?
Paradox explained its rationale for raising Crusader Kings 3 DLC prices over on the game's official forums. There, community ambassador MossyShieldMaiden said the price hike was intended to "reflect the overall value of this kind of content moving forward". Naturally, this also means that future Crusader Kings 3 flavor packs will cost $12.99 instead of $6.99. It's hard to directly compare these packs to other games' DLC if you're not familiar with Crusader Kings 3, but for a very rough comparison, imagine Sims 4 Stuff Packs, but for medieval grand strategy. Flavor Packs add extra units, minor systems, aesthetic stuff, and new music, but they aren't full-blown expansions.
As you can probably imagine, this hasn't gone over particularly well with the community. Most of the comments on the thread announcing the price change are from commenters asking why it's necessary. One commenter points out that Paradox is already known for its ridiculous DLC practices, which is hard to argue with; games like Stellaris, with its entire team dedicated to maintaining DLC packs, prove that to be the case. Paradox says the price hike is due to come into effect in September, so if you are interested in picking up these packs, you should probably do so before September 13th.
Does this price hike also apply to the base game and other DLCs?
In a word: no. Paradox assures fans that the flavor pack price hike won't apply to the base game or its Royal Court expansion, nor does it apply to the price of the game's Royal Edition. There's also no subscription or in-game currency to hike, a la Eve Online, so that's something to be reassured by if you're a Crusader Kings 3 fan. Paradox also says that if you're an owner of the Royal Edition or the game's first Expansion Pack, "nothing will change for you". Of course, that likely won't apply to future flavor packs, so you'll have to pay $12.99 for those if and when they arrive.
This change is also reminiscent of the recent announcement that Space Engineers would raise the price of its DLC, although in that case the DLC was merely raised by a single dollar to support ongoing development costs. Paradox doesn't actually cite a need to do this; instead, the studio simply points to the value of its flavor pack DLC, which it clearly feels was not being accurately represented by the previous pricing. We'll have to wait and see what Paradox does with its Crusader Kings 3 content in future. In the meantime, you can pick the game up right now on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5.
