The Dark Age of Paradox Interactive: What exactly happened to one of PC gaming's best publishers? (https://www.pcgamer.com/games/strategy/the-dark-age-of-paradox-interactive-what-exactly-happened-to-one-of-pc-gamings-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.
Wonder how our boy Johan is doing?
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.