Paradox Interactive has certainly been featured heavily in the gaming news cycle lately! Starting from the top, the video game publisher is known for its prolific grand strategy games. You know the ones. Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis. Games a publisher should rightfully feel proud to have published and garnered the adoration they’ve received.
The slide down the slippery slope for Paradox arguably started with the release of 2023’s Cities: Skylines II. Not only did Skylines II underperform in sales compared to the first, but the game was also lambasted for its shoddy launch. Many players reported a rogues’ gallery worth of bugs and glitches. By the end of the year, Skylines II had been so publicly reviled that one of the developers referred to the feedback as “toxic.”
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The next blow (though not quite as severe) came in the form of The Lamplighters League, which Paradox published alongside developer Harebrained Schemes. Personally, I enjoyed what I played of the game when it popped up on Game Pass! However, it seemed to slip past most folks’ radars. And, you know, it was a commercial and critical “disappointment.” At the start of 2024 — on the first day of the year — Harebrained Schemes and Paradox agreed to an amicable divorce, officially splitting. Then, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 happened.
paradox interactive bobs and weaves directly into more pain
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is worthy of its own article. For now, I’ll say this: It ain’t lookin’ good for the kid. Since announcing the game back in 2019, Paradox has been struggling with it. Many of the developers from the first game who originally joined for the sequel were “released” from the project one after the other. Each veteran Bloodlines dev leaving was another cut to fans’ excitement over the sequel.
Then in 2021, Hardsuit Labs, the development studio working on the game, was booted altogether. The Chinese Room took over, and updates on the project have been, uh… sparse, to say the least. This would culminate in Paradox’s recent interview with Game Developer. Deputy CEO Mattias Lilja and Chief Creative Officer Henrik Fåhraeuz admitted that perhaps Paradox’s leadership had flown a little too close to the sun in their grand ambitions.
“We had a period a couple of years ago where we invested a lot of money — and quite a lot of it into [projects] we were not very used to doing. We had this idea that we could go fairly big early on and still be successful. I think we’ve been proven wrong on several of those counts,” said Lilja. Paradox also made it clear they want nothing to do with the Bloodlines IP after the upcoming sequel. Which must make fans feel great about how Bloodlines 2 will shape up when it (maybe) releases!
Oh, and they’re still trying to beat the allegations that they go too far with some of their DLC expansions across their titles. So, yeah, it’s been a dreary year (or two) for Paradox. But here’s hoping Bloodlines 2 is a GOTY candidate for whichever year it finally comes out!
