Now Paradox offer a DLC subscription for Europa Universalis 4 too
After starting with a Crusader Kings 2 sub in February
Last month, Paradox launched an optional subscription service for Crusader Kings 2 which gave access to all its expansions and DLC for a small monthly fee. Now they're doing the same with another grand strategy game. Yesterday they launched a separate subscription for Europa Universalis 4, once again offering all the expansions and DLC for a price of £4/month. And it's still optional, they're still selling stuff separately too.
Paradox previously ran a trial of this EU4 sub service for selected players, and as of yesterday it's now available for everyone. For a monthly fee of £4/€5/$5, players get access to the expansions and various content packs, present and future. It's the same price as a CK2 sub, though EU4's base game isn't free like CK2's is, so you do need that too. That wodge of DLC would currently cost £220 or thereabouts, though obviously some are less important than others and they're often much cheaper on sale. Still, unless you're in it for the long haul, a sub might very well be cheap and handy.
Or if you'd rather, you can buy DLC the same way as ever.
Starting a subscription service for CK2 sounded pretty neat, especially given that the base game is free, but I'm less excited to see them start a second scheme for EU4. Might suit people who only want to play one particular game, but myself I'd be way more interested in a single sub covering all Paradox grand strategy games, rather than lots of individual ones. Though considering I don't subscribe to any game services at the moment, I'm probably not the type of person they're doing this for. Already got too many damn subscriptions.
While EU4 is seven years old, it could be expanded and patched for a while yet. Paradox last year opened a new studio who are starting out by helping on EU4, with the plan to make their own grand strategy later. It is one of the best strategy games, sez us. The next expansion will be Leviathan, adding new ways for small-to-medium nations to be powerful and interesting. The devs talked more about that during last week's Paradox Insider livestream.