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It seems odd to me. Paradox is a Swedish company, and Sweden is a fairly liberal country. Same-sex marriage was legalized in 2009, and even the Church of Sweden

• golemiprague 6y ago
  There are still big parts of society who are against legalising gay merriage and many are afraid to even admit it because of cancel culture and the power the gay community have especially in the media.
• inshadows 6y ago
  Then it must be a political issue, right? Or maybe it's just a simulator of dark ages where same-sex marriage just wasn't. Go ahead, point out my wrong usage of "dark ages".
  • vmception 6y ago
    Or they just didn't program that and had too little representation in their company to notice and weigh that against marketability in various markets.
    • dudul 6y ago
      Or they did notice, figured out it would be complex to modify the engine to handle this case, found data indicating that having this feature or not would have zero impact of the marketability/sales of the game, and just decided to use the bandwidth on something more valuable.
      • sudosysgen 6y ago
        Have we read the same post? It's a one-byte modification, and they ban for mentioning the patch.
        • COGlory 6y ago
          That will introduce game breaking behavior when you can't have kids...
          • sudosysgen 6y ago
            Yes, of course. That's the cost of same-sex marriage in such a game, unless you use the House Seniority mechanic you will eventually have a game over. That doesn't make this anymore difficult than switching a false to a true in an optional fun feature, it'll just be very difficult to play the game (but not impossible!)
          • PeterisP 6y ago
            Well, one can have kids from other partners, not only within marriage.
          • bregma 6y ago
            Elective succession and tanistry were rather common historically and an option in the game, so having kids shouldn't be significant. The key is the heir has to be in your dynasty, not that it be the fruit of your loins.
        • dudul 6y ago
          The author acknowledges themselves: "The patch that I made was only good for the current Steam version of CK3, on my operating system, with my cpu architecture." Not counting the fact that a change like that would need to be more thoroughly QA-ed to make sure it doesn't break something at some point.
          • sudosysgen 6y ago
            This is because targets have different binaries. The change in the code is removing one if statement.
        • inshadows 6y ago
          Maybe adding same-sex marriage just isn't important for game from times where same-sex marriage was non-existent. I want rocket jumps in every game but I doubt my desire will be fulfilled.
• p1necone 6y ago
  Presumably slavish dedication to historical accuracy. Although were there really no cultures in that era that allowed same sex marriage? I personally wouldn't want a seemingly historically accurate (ish) game to present the churches of the age as being okay with same sex marriage when they weren't. Although being able to toggle it on in the settings would be cool.
  • chaorace 6y ago
    CKIII has several "fun" toggles for ahistoric behavior, so I'm not sure if this argument fits. For example: you can flip the default inheritence system to favor women or even make the majority of people homosexual. I'm guessing it's just more or less something they didn't get around to implementing. Perhaps they wanted to tackle it in a future patch or DLC (I can see this happening if turning this on somehow led to buggy behavior in other areas)
    • p1necone 6y ago
      Yeah that's exactly what I'd want for marriage. I'm definitely more inclined to think this is just one of many features they didn't get around to adding rather than an intentional omission.
  • krapp 6y ago
    >Although were there really no cultures in that era that allowed same sex marriage? No Christian cultures, obviously.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • kergonath 6y ago
      Was there any historical culture in which same-sex marriage was common or accepted? I can’t think of one, Christian or otherwise (though I can think of a couple of examples of same-sex people got married by subterfuge).
• crooked-v 6y ago
  My personal guess would be that there's some kind of non-deterministic game-state-exploding bug tangled up with the marriage checks, and that the amount of work to fix it puts it at the bottom of the list after new feature work. This would be entirely consistent with the sorts of weird bugs that have already come up in CK3 change logs.
• jeffchien 6y ago
  Their official stance [1] is: > You can make same-sex relations acceptable, but marriage will still only be opposite due to historical constraints. Other than their official stance, I wonder if it's because they'd need to script in the in-game church's (presumably negative) reaction to this. Also there doesn't seem to be adoption in the base game, so maybe they didn't want to hand the player a quick path to a game over? [1] https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/index.php?title=FAQ https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/index.php?title=FAQ
  • p1necone 6y ago
    If it were me I'd just let same sex couples impregnate each other, regardless of sex. Sounds like a hoot.
    • ttt0 6y ago
      I'd also add furries and dragonkins while we're at it, because why not, it might as well be a fantasy game
      • Rebelgecko 6y ago
        CK2 let put a horse named Glitterhoof on your council and then have sex with it, so that would be par for the course.
        • COGlory 6y ago
          Was it ever clear if Glitterhoof was real, or a hallucination?
        • ttt0 6y ago
          A reference to Caligula?
        • Semaphor 6y ago
          Here is the story: https://imgur.com/a/K1utf https://imgur.com/a/K1utf Note that this was unintentional ;)
• noicebrewery 6y ago
  No guarantees about the personal beliefs of the person/people running the forums, who seems to be the major blocker of this patch / discussing the patch.
• dudul 6y ago
  > it turns out that the game logic to marry two characters is contained in the game binary, not in the scripting files, and the game engine will unilaterally block same sex marriages. > it became clear from statements both on the forums and off of it that while the concern was noted, fixing the issue would be difficult, and it wasn’t a current priority. Doesn't look like it's that easy.
• sudosysgen 6y ago
  Crusader Kings III has you live on as your daughter/son when you die. As there is no adoption mechanic, same-sex relationships will lead to a game over unless you are one of the few countries that can use the House Seniority mechanic. So I guess they never got around to implementing adoption. Banning though...? That was weird.
  • maxander 6y ago
    > So I guess they never got around to implementing adoption. If you think about this, it seems pretty obvious the reason they didn’t include adoption was that it’s overpowered. The CK series is all about managing dynasties, so the randomness of reproduction is a major game mechanic, one of the primary sources of problems and challenges. Adoption would totally negate all of that. Like, if Henry VIII could just have adopted a son, his whole story would have been so much more straightforward! :) (None of which really justifies the Paradox response, of course, since adoption isn’t necessary for having same-sex marriages (even player ones) and not losing.)
    • busterarm 6y ago
      It's the same reason as adoption. You have the ability to arrange marriages as King or Queen. Just as if you could adopt, you could dilute the power of your enemies by arranging same-sex marriages that can have no legal heir.
    • fshbbdssbbgdd 6y ago
      They could make adoption produce a weaker claim to the title, with greater risk of usurpers leading a rebellion. I think this mechanic could be balanced and would add realism (it happened in history).
      • amyjess 6y ago
        It's also something that could be restricted by culture. In some cultures, adopting your heir is a normal, everyday thing, but in others, blood is all that matters.
  • 6y ago
• josefx 6y ago
  Take a look at the screenshot of that same sex marriage, do you notice something odd? The gender symbols at the bottom are male/female not male/male. The patch only disables the gender check, it does not fix the game content or any other logic related to marriage. There are probably dozens of follow up bugs waiting, some of which will need new game logic and art to fix.
  • flatiron 6y ago
    I just can’t fathom they couldn’t see this coming.
  • meibo 6y ago
    That just means someone in charge made a bad choice during planning and either no dev or designer ever dared to speak up against it or many of them supported said bad choice.
    • Causality1 6y ago
      Why is it a bad choice? A game set in middle age Europe has no more reason to foresee needing the ability to mod gay marriage into it than accommodating modding cell phones into it. It's not an insignificant amount for work just to include an anachronism.
      • meibo 6y ago
        Have you played this game and seen how much you can customize it? What's an anachronism in a sea of many others, if you wish to have them in your personal save games. And if you don't, you stick to whatever is historically accurate. Not having the foresight to be aware of this matter and the issues that come with it(going as far to be be especially exclusive) as a game studio in 2020 is what they should think about the next time they set out to make a game like this.
        • xanth 6y ago
          And the game engine is from 2007 which likely built in many of these historically accurate constraints to reduce scope. Remember until recently this much more core functionality was broken; "Fixed looting not making you hostile to looted country if you’re a vassal" https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Patch_1.3.X#1.3.1 https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Patch_1.3.X#1.3.1
• retrac 6y ago
  I suspect it has approximately nothing to do with what the patch implemented. And a lot more to do with it being effectively a guide to reverse-engineering the game executable. Paradox makes multiplayer games. They probably saw this as How To Cheat 101. As to not wanting to do the work to make it implementable without a binary patch, well, it's just not in the game. I can imagine hesitance to start modifying the game based on demands of modders for multiple reasons, even if they liked the mod itself.
  • geofft 6y ago
    It sounds like the thing that was posted on the forums was the binary patch itself, and this article's explanation of how to reverse engineer the game was written after the poster was banned.
  • pseudalopex 6y ago
    They host How to Cheat 101.[1] [1] https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Console_commands https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Console_commands
    • Google234 6y ago
      You can’t use those in multiplayer... unless you reverse engineer the game and patch the cheat checks oout...
• Forge36 6y ago
  Inheritance and adoption was probably cut from the feature set for simplicity. Without an heir you "lose"and I suspect adoption to force an heir would break some lose scenarios
• psychtrauma 6y ago
  Occam's razor suggests to me that some people in the design process defined marriage as being strictly between a man and a woman, and nobody else cared enough to change this. It doesn't fill me with joy that a 2020 game would make that choice. Also the choice to have characters default to open homophobia, and for that to be used as a positive in promotional material, is not an indicator of a gay-friendly organisation.
  • brailsafe 6y ago
    But don't forget about Hanlon's razor. I don't play Crusader Kings, was more curious about the technical bit, but it would be a shame to not be able to release what seems like a quazi-historical game with fairly different cultural norms by default.
    • psychtrauma 6y ago
      Hanlon's razor: "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". What's the difference? The outcome is the same.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • kergonath 6y ago
    > Occam's razor suggests to me that some people in the design process defined marriage as being strictly between a man and a woman, and nobody else cared enough to change this. Occam’s razor suggests they built a historical game and just ended up embedding some in-game cultural background in the game engine. As others pointed out, dealing with same-sex marriages affects several aspects of the game, particularly dynastic rules. > It doesn't fill me with joy that a 2020 game would make that choice. You are working from your assumption, here. We really have no idea how it ended up that way. > Also the choice to have characters default to open homophobia, and for that to be used as a positive in promotional material, is not an indicator of a gay-friendly organisation. I find it interesting that you genuinely feel that. If anything, it tells a lot about how pervasive violence is in our societies. The game is full of back-stabbing, lies, cheating, poisonings, forced marriages, the occasional war, and yes, hate and irrational beliefs. Not much of it is moral, and yet you’re not pained that the developers might be enthusiastic about smothering babies. It is a game set up in Europe in the Middle Ages. Hardly the most progressive environment. If you want to build a tolerant utopia, Cities Skylines is probably a better game. It is also great, but you might also like the occasional opportunity to be a ruthless, amoral, power hungry arsehole every now and then, regardless of your personal situation IRL.
• baud147258 6y ago
  Maybe Paradox don't want to host mods that are a modified version of the core executable binaries
• bstar77 6y ago
  You also cannot disable homosexuality so I don't think their decisions are politically aligned.
  • opk 6y ago
    Richard I of England and Philip II of France were very likely homosexual but still got married off in the hopes of creating an heir. Maybe a suitably bribed pope in the middle ages would have found a way to get a gay marriage passed. That it'd even be considered necessary is doubtful - that "at night their beds did not separate them" was likely good enough for that pair of K̶i̶n̶g̶s̶/Queens. So they could be well-aligned with the relevant historical period and setting. I have zero familiarity with the game so am purely considering the title here.
• Guthur 6y ago
  Balancing this in a dynasty simulator would be an absolute nightmare. Presumably the AI would have the ability as well, and then you would have to start coding some restrictions to avoid a dynasty simulator spanning 100s of years going off the rails and then you'll be in for all sorts of progressive political wrangling. Frankly if it was me I'd have stayed well away from it as well. Also, Paradox have not a great track record of balancing things or maintaining quality straight out of the gate with their games anyway. I do love their games though.
  • Guthur 6y ago
    I know I shouldn't talk about down votes but I love how it proves my point. It is impossible to have rational discussions about these topics and so it's actually optimal to avoid them entirely. And as an aside the game had homosexuality and so assuming there was some conservative stance on the part of the game developer appears ill founded.