The Dark Age of Paradox Interactive: What exactly happened to one of PC gaming's

[viper37]

The Dark Age of Paradox Interactive: What exactly happened to one of PC gaming's best publishers? 


Nice read.


From disappointing launches to delays to cancellations, it's been a rough time for the Swedish publisher, but it's trying to bounce back.

Paradox Interactive once encapsulated the best parts of PC gaming. As a publisher, it celebrated niches like grand strategy and had a huge hand in expanding their popularity into full-blown genres. It took risks on new developers and gave modders the chance to create full-fledged games. There were missteps and mistakes, but from both the publishing and development side the Swedes kept knocking out bangers. 
Penumbra, Mount & Blade, Crusader Kings, Stellaris, Cities: Skylines, Surviving Mars, Magicka, Age of Wonders, BattleTech—its library of games includes an impressive number of all-time greats. The Paradox of 2024, though, seems to be in free fall. 

• Originally slated for 2020, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 has seen constant delays and a developer switcheroo. It now won't be out until 2025.
• Cities: Skylines 2's first DLC was so poorly received and timed that everyone was refunded and it was added to the base game. 
• Millennia landed with a thud, following a similar response to Star Trek: Infinite and Lamplighter's League.  
• Life By You, the much-touted Sims competitor from Rod Humble and Paradox Tectonic, was delayed and then cancelled right before its early access launch.  
• Prison Architect 2 was delayed indefinitely, soon after its original developer was replaced. 
• Paradox announced a 90% dip in operating profit in its second quarter of 2024.  

While Paradox Development Studio's efforts, including Victoria 3, Crusader Kings 3 and Stellaris, appear to be going strong, when it comes to the publishing side of things it's been a rough year. A rough few years, really. But this is not the first time the company has found itself trying to weather the storm. 

[Caliga]

Wonder how our boy Johan is doing?

[viper37]

I had a thought for him.  That's the kind of report that must have hit him hard, even if he leads his own studio (Tinto, part of Paradox) now.