Paradox's dlc policy is why I might buy the games, but rarely buy the dlc. I do enjoy the gameplay in them, I probably have something like 3k hours between CK2, CK3, EU4 and Stellaris.

Tldr: They've been going through this cycle of consecutive huge successes and consecutive flops for decades but this is the worst series of flops in the company's history

My guess is because of shareholder pressure

The issue with paradox's game design philosophy is what makes their dlc heavy approach so much more problematic.

From a design point a mentality of "always more stuff and always room for more stuff" isn't going to produce immediately compelling gameplay nor is it going to focus on stripping down fluff until that magic feeling of "the sum is greater than its parts" arises.

Paradox games are almost never more than a sum of their parts, and frequently customers are purposefully made to feel by paradox that their formerly complete game is lacking and needs the new dlc to actually be a coherent full experience.

From a design and profit standpoint, paradox is incapable of institutionally perceiving when a game design has justtt enough but not too much stuff for emergent and interesting gamestates to arise organically from the way stuff is put together (rather than from the mere presence of more stuff).

Hearing that imperator Rome surpassed their expectations is surprising because they must have had extremely low expectations. That is my biggest gaming purchase regret of all time.

I stopped buying their games ages ago because keeping up with DLCs was borderline work that somehow became more and more expensive. Devs need to learn to finish their games and move on to new ideas.

Paradox Interactive once encapsulated the best parts of PC gaming.

Ah yes ripping off people with incomplete games that have dozens of DLCs.

They looked at EA's The Sims and thought: "I want to be like that!"