On March 4th, 2025, Paradox Interactive showed why the Paradox live service method is failing.
Graveyard of Empires was, well, god awful. Most people know that. The few that are coping by saying that they really enjoyed it have never interacted with a piece of media in their lives or are so severely dismayed that they paid $15 dollars for the equivalent of a Road to 56 update that they have to blame themselves, but can't. But, I think the DLC really cracked open an already-existing issue in Hearts of Iron IV.
What the hell is up with communism?
No, really, what is up with the ideology? For an idea that held such a grip on the psyches of rulers and commonfolk alike ever since it was formulated, it seems to take a backseat in the greater game of HoI4. Ultimately, the main conflict in the game is between western liberal democracy and the fascist dictatorships of the Interwar period. In the DLC, every country that has new content has a communist path, but none of them are notable, hell, the Afghanistan path for communism is literally in the economy tree? What the Hell?
I remember when the developers were showing off the Afghanistan tree, and also being infuriated at the incredibly vapid tree and going onto the forums to see if anyone had pointed this out. Luckily, someone actually did! And imagine my joy when I saw that a developer responded! Oh boy, are they going to take the criticism to heart and improve the tree to be actually fun? Well... no. They claimed that the material conditions of Afghanistan would only allow a communist government to come into power if another communist nation had supported it. Not only is this claim absolute bullshit, as if that was true then Russia and China would not have had their own communist revolutions, nor Angola, Mozambique, India, Chile, or Colombia. Ultimately, The communist tree could've been made so that the path actually focused on disseminating communism across Afghanistan, but none the less... even if that were true, then that's no excuse for a shitty path. They could have made it so that the path played on that lack of communist support was a mechanic in the path, having to manage your country, battle reactionary leaders, and avoid being counter-couped. I wonder where I've heard that before...? Clearly, for a company that makes "history" games, they clearly don't know anything about history.