Last week, we reported on a surprising development with Paradox interactive where they inexplicably upped their prices for many regions around the world.

Yesterday, Paradox CEO Fredrick Wester, addressed concerned fans about the price changes and about the various theories that had sprung up in its wake. Ultimately, while Fredrick denied ideas like “Tencent bought 5% of Paradox and now they’re all greedy” and “They’re now a publicly traded company and therefore do things the market wish for”, he failed to explain the reason for the changes.

However, Mr. Wester did insist that Paradox is still the same company it’s always been with the same pig-headed CEO (himself) and he takes responsibility for any mistakes made. Along these lines, Fredrick laid out recent problems as a mistake in communication: “You deserve more transparency and better communication from Paradox when it comes to changing of our prices and pricing policy”.

He then proceeded to outline a plan for rolling back the price changes. Unfortunately as the Steam Summer Sale is underway, no price changes can take place until the sale finishes, unless Paradox drops their games from the sale altogether. As this means some people have and will lose out, either from buying games during the price hike, or during the summer sale. Frederick has indicated that Paradox will try and make up the difference between games bought during the sale, and prices after: “we will try to refund (if possible in the Steam platform) or reimburse with games of a value exceeding the difference”

The “try” is there because Frederick is unclear still on exactly what actions will be possible via Steam. However, if this cannot be done, he has promised at least, to double the difference between profits made during the price hike, and what they would have been at the old prices, and then donate the difference to the UN Refugee Agency.

Not explaining exactly what went wrong, is the typical corporate (and politicians) way of glossing over problems. But, I would say Paradox are doing the right thing now, and Frederick’s frank and personal response should win back a lot of the lost trust (along with refunds and donations of course). Humans make mistakes and it’s always good to see faceless corporate entities show they have some humanity still, even if just by way of an apology.