Update 1.17.0.1 & A Long Overdue Apology

Hi everyone,

My name is Riad, and I’m the QA Manager for PDS Black, the studio working on Crusader Kings III. You might know me as the guy who wrote a dev diary about Black Forge Jam. I want to speak to you directly and honestly. First of all. I am not a PR guy, and I don’t have an elite team of ghostwriters who can craft a response for me. I work at Paradox, and I am someone who cares deeply about this game and this community.

I want to take the proper time to say something that’s been on my mind all day, and led me to ask for approval by my higher-ups to make this post:

I’m sorry.

“Coronations” was not up to the standard you deserve, and that’s on me. As the QA Manager for the studio, it is my job to ensure that our releases meet the QA vision we have set out. It is clear we didn’t give the project the resources and attention it needed, and the result was a release that let you down. You have every right to be upset, and I want to acknowledge that openly.

To give some context, not as an excuse, but as a bit of background, our team has been pouring enormous effort into “All Under Heaven”. It’s the biggest expansion we’ve ever attempted, and making sure it’s both fun and stable has demanded most of our experienced developers, and basically every resource we have in the studio to be committed towards that release to ensure that things like tick speed performance is up to your expectations. Due to this, our other projects, such as “Coronations”, have had less resources dedicated to them. Though I am very proud of the development team, and really amazed with what they did with such limited resources, we didn't assign enough people to oversee the release and meet our quality demands, and that was clearly unfair to both them and you, our fans.

I don’t want this to happen again. As a studio, we’re taking a hard look at how we assign resources, and support our developers so that every release meets the expectations you rightfully have. For example, we will be more stringent about allowing last-minute changes to the game (which can cause issues like broken oaths). We will also ensure that we dedicate more time towards full-length playthroughs throughout the entire development cycle, to ensure that issues like these can’t slip through. This is about making sure the quality of every DLC lives up to the game that I, and many of you, love.

Many of us on the team, myself included, joined Paradox as fans of the games. Meeting you at events (most recently in Visby!), hearing your stories, and seeing how much Crusader Kings III means to you is what makes this work so meaningful. That’s why it hurts so much when we fuck up like this. We don’t take your trust for granted, and I want to do my best to ensure we earn it back.

In the meantime, we have done our best to address many of these issues you’ve experienced with yesterday’s release. Please let me know directly if there are any other issues that are breaking the game for you and I’ll do everything I can to make sure they’re included in upcoming patches. Additionally, we are planning at least one more patch for Coronations to fix many of the issues we encountered ahead of the release, but didn’t have enough time to fix.

Thank you for