Crusader Kings III is the third installment in a series of grand strategy games in the Middle Ages. One of the hooks of the title is that it is heavily customizable. Gamers can begin their dynasty in either 867 or 1066 and play until 1453.
Players can also choose the type of government and dominant religion within their societies. While the base version of the game allowed for same-sex attraction, players could not make their unions official. Some mods had been developed to allow for same-sex marriages, but they had to be removed by developer Paradox because they negatively impacted gameplay. Paradox, however, began to investigate how to incorporate the feature into the game.
In a blog post from earlier this week, the developers wrote, “Before 1.3, same-sex concubinage was unintentionally possible to mod in, but had the potential to cause a variety of errors. In 1.3, we explicitly restricted it in code as part of fixing a concubine-related bug, believing it’d never been possible at all.”
The post continued:
“Coming with 1.5 is support for same-sex marriage, not only just in mods either but as a new game rule alongside the Same-Sex relations game rule so you can use it in un-modded games too. We’ve updated a variety of AI logic and interactions and content to take that into account when playing.This is something that we’re very happy to be able to put into the game and have support in the game rules for unmodded games too, it is something that a lot of the team and community wanted and we are glad it is finally going to be shipped in 1.5.”
With this update, Crusader Kings III has become one of many games to feature same-sex unions. Other prominent examples include Fable, The Sims, Dragon Age, and Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.
