Paradox will test a subscription service for Europa Universalis V.

According to a forum post, the idea behind the service is to make the full Europa Universalis V experience more accessible to new players.

However, the studio has said that the game and DLC can still be purchased the normal way for those who prefer it.

"We have heard for years from existing and potential new players that the cost of getting the game and all expansions all at once is quite expensive (and might be discouraging for completely new EU4 fans), it's been supported for almost 7 years after all," said the post.

"A subscription model has been suggested to us on many occasions, so we thought we'd run a test to see how popular such a service would be."

The company will run a series of tests, a new update 1.29.4 has been released to aid in the experiments. All mods that worked with the previous patch are said to work with the new update.

Paradox has assured its player base that the game will not be affected while the tests take place.

"We are running a few experiments aimed at reducing the threshold for new players to access the full EU4 experience," said the post.

"We are approaching this in a data-driven way, somewhat related to what we did in CK2 a few years back (and that test turned out great when it comes to growing the CK2 family around the globe); which means that we cannot fully disclose how exactly it will look, as that will interfere with the test.

"What we can say is that it’s fully and completely optional and does not require you to interact with it in any way."

The post continued: "We hope that these experiments do not negatively impact your game experience, but, since updates have the potential to cause unforeseen effects, it is important that you know what is happening."

Last year, Paradox acquired the Prison Architect IP. The game had been played by four million people by June 2019. In October 2019, the company claimed that competition in the PC games market will benefit everyone.