Paradox Interactive AB is a

video game publisher A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that have been developed either internally by the publisher or externally by a video game developer. They often finance the development, sometimes by paying a video game developer ...

based in

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. The company started out as the video game division of Target Games and then Paradox Entertainment (now Cabinet Entertainment) before being spun out into an independent company in 2004. Through a combination of expanding internal studios, founding new studios and purchasing independent developers, the company has grown to comprise nine first-party development studios, including their flagship

Paradox Development Studio Paradox Development Studio (PDS) is a Swedish video game developer founded in 1995. It is closely associated with its parent company and video game publisher, Paradox Interactive. It is best known for its grand strategy wargame series ''Europa U ...

, and acts as publisher for games from other developers. Paradox is best known for releasing

strategy video game Strategy video game is a major Video game genres, video game genre that focuses on analyzing and strategizing over direct quick reaction in order to secure success. Although many types of video games can contain strategic elements, the strategy ...

s, especially historically-themed

grand strategy game A grand strategy wargame or simply grand strategy game (GSG) is a wargame that places focus on grand strategy: military strategy at the level of movement and use of a nation state or empire's resources. The genre has considerable overlap with 4 ...

s, and has published strategy games in different settings, as well as games of other genres such as

role-playing video game Role-playing video games, also known as CRPG (computer/console role-playing games), comprise a broad video game genre generally defined by a detailed story and character advancement (often through increasing characters' levels or other skills) ...

s and management simulators. They typically continue development of their games after initial release with the creation of

downloadable content content (DLC) is additional content created for an already released video game, distributed through the Internet by the game's publisher. It can be added for no extra cost or as a form of video game monetization, enabling the publisher to gain ad ...

, and are also known for creating games that are easy to mod. Outside of video games, Paradox has created board games based on several of its titles, and owns the rights to the

tabletop role-playing game A tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG or TRPG), also known as a pen-and-paper role-playing game, is a kind of role-playing game (RPG) in which the participants describe their characters' actions through speech and sometimes movements. Participants d ...

series ''

World of Darkness ''World of Darkness'' is a series of tabletop role-playing games, originally created by Mark Rein-Hagen for White Wolf Publishing. It began as an annual line of five games in 1991–1995, with ''Vampire: The Masquerade'', ''Werewolf: The Apocaly ...

'' since purchasing

White Wolf Publishing White Wolf Entertainment AB, formerly White Wolf Publishing, was an American roleplaying game and book publisher. The company was founded in 1991 as a merger between Lion Rampant (game publisher), Lion RampantTarget Games, a Sweden-based board game company. Target had been producing board and tabletop role-playing games in the 1980s and 1990s, and ventured into video games. By the late 1990s, Target was struggling financially, and they ultimately folded into bankruptcy by 1999. The video game division spun off into a separate entity, Paradox Entertainment, which published video game adaptions of Target's games. Between 2000 and 2003, Paradox Entertainment released the first titles of several grand strategy games, including ''

Europa Universalis ''Europa Universalis'' is a Grand strategy game, grand strategy video game developed by Paradox Development Studio and published in 2000 by Strategy First. Development The game was originally based on a French board game of the Europa Universali ...

'', '' Hearts of Iron'', '' Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun'', and '' Crusader Kings''. The company had several mediocre releases, as well as a failed, ambitious attempt at releasing a

free-to-play "Free-to-play" ("F2P" or "FtP") video games are games that give players access to a significant portion of their content for free. The term "free-to-play business model" or simply, "free-to-play model", refers collectively to business models tha ...

massively multiplayer online game A massively multiplayer online game (MMOG or more commonly MMO) is an online video game with a large number of players to interact in the same online game world. MMOs usually feature a huge, persistent world, persistent open world, although t ...

first-person shooter A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre, video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a First person (video games), first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through t ...

title on a triple-A scale, leading to more than 30 developers losing their jobs when the project was later cancelled before its completion. By around 2003, Paradox Entertainment began buying the intellectual property rights to various franchises like ''

Conan the Barbarian Conan the Barbarian (also known as Conan the Cimmerian) is a fictional sword and sorcery hero created by American author Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) and who debuted in 1932 and went on to appear in a series of fantasy stories published in ''We ...

'' from

Robert E. Howard Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936) was an American writer who wrote pulp magazine, pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. He created the character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sor ...

and '' Solomon Kane''. Fredrik Wester, current

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

of Paradox Interactive, stated that around 2003 he had been brought aboard by Paradox Entertainment to help write their business plan, which included the drive to transform their video game division into a triple-A studio. Wester cautioned them about this, pointing back to the studio's previous unsuccessful project. The Paradox Entertainment executives did not take this advice well and decided it would be better to shutter the video games division and focus exclusively on licensing their acquired brands. Instead, Wester, along with the Paradox Entertainment CEO Theodore Bergquist, bought out the video games division retaining the Swedish

and all seven of its developers including Johan Andersson and Henrik Fåhraeus. They gained all intellectual property rights to the studio's past games, forming Paradox Interactive in 2004.

Growth as a publisher (2005–2015)

One of the first titles that was planned by Paradox Interactive was '' Crusader Kings'', another grand strategy title. Their publisher,

Strategy First Strategy First Inc. is a Canadian video game publisher based in Montreal. Founded in 1988 by Don McFatridge, Steve Wall and Dave Hill, the company filed for bankruptcy in 2004 and was subsequently acquired by Silverstar Holdings in 2005. Initia ...

, filed for bankruptcy about two months into its release, costing Paradox revenues from those sales as well as the lack of a North American distributor. After the launch of the digital storefront

Steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

around 2003, Wester experimented with digital marketplaces by offering

for ''Victoria'' via their website. The experiment proved successful, and subsequently in 2006 the company launched Paradox On Demand, a digital storefront with several of Paradox's back-catalog for sale. This eventually was renamed as GamersGate later in 2006. To help support it, Paradox looked to sign on games from developers as to bolster the company's reputation as a world-class video game publisher. Wester stated in 2013 that many of these games were "terribly bad", but that some proved to be strong performers, such as '' Mount & Blade''. GamersGate eventually was spun off to be its own entity in 2008, while Paradox continued to acquire additional titles to fill its distributor catalogue which helped to finance continued development of grand strategy titles from the Paradox Development Studio. By 2013, the company had reached 100 employees, and established new offices in Stockholm, Sweden. Paradox Interactive continued to publish numerous games from smaller developers over the next several years, finding success in games like '' Magicka'' from Arrowhead Game Studios (the publisher's first title to break 1 million copies sold) and ''

War of the Roses The Wars of the Roses, known at the time and in following centuries as the Civil Wars, were a series of armed confrontations, machinations, battles and campaigns fought over control of the English throne from 1455 to 1487. The conflict was fo ...

'' from Fatshark. Wester and others in Paradox admitted in 2013 that this approach had been ambitious and led to issues with

quality control Quality control (QC) is a process by which entities review the quality of all factors involved in production. ISO 9000 defines quality control as "a part of quality management focused on fulfilling quality requirements". This approach plac ...

in the resulting games, leading to a general impression about Paradox games being buggy. The publisher had greenlit and invested in several titles by its internal studios without careful review that failed to pan out, such as '' East vs. West'', a spin-off from the ''Hearts of Iron'' series, By 2014, the company had made a decision to become much more selective of which titles to publish, making sure they were able to provide the necessary quality control support each title needed before agreeing to publish. ''

Crusader Kings II ''Crusader Kings II'' is a grand strategy game developed by Paradox Development Studio and published by Paradox Interactive. Set in the Middle Ages, the game was released on February 14, 2012, as a sequel to 2004's '' Crusader Kings''. On Octob ...

'' in 2012 was one of the first games developed and published by Paradox with more attention focused on development timelines and testing to avoid past mistakes, and Paradox has since followed a similar model on its future titles. One of Paradox Interactive's more notable publishing deals was their agreement with Colossal Order in 2011 to publish their '' Cities in Motion'' transportation simulation game and later its sequel '' Cities in Motion 2''. Colossal Order ultimately wanted to produce a city simulation game to challenge

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by former Apple Inc., Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry ...

SimCity ''SimCity'' is an open-ended city-building video game franchise originally designed by Will Wright. The first game in the series, '' SimCity'', was published by Maxis in 1989 and was followed by several sequels and many other spin-off ''S ...

'' series but Paradox had expressed concerns regarding the competition. However, after the release of the 2013 ''SimCity'' game and the poor reception it received due to a variety of gameplay changes and difficulties with online services required to play the game, Paradox greenlit Colossal Order for its city simulation game, '' Cities: Skylines'', which was released in 2015 and has sold over 12 million copies by June 2022. Another collaboration for Paradox was with

Obsidian Entertainment Obsidian Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Irvine, California and part of Xbox Game Studios. It was founded in June 2003, shortly before the closure of Black Isle Studios, by ex-Black Isle employees Feargus Urquh ...

. Obsidian, having struggled financially, crowd-sourced the development of a new game, '' Pillars of Eternity'', and entered into a publishing deal for it through Paradox. Obsidian published their next title, ''

Tyranny A tyrant (), in the modern English language, English usage of the word, is an autocracy, absolute ruler who is unrestrained by law, or one who has usurper, usurped a legitimate ruler's sovereignty. Often portrayed as cruel, tyrants may defen ...

'' through Paradox. Paradox opened its second internal development studio, Paradox Arctic, located in Umeå, Sweden, formed from former members of EA DICE and Starbreeze Studios, in 2014.

Going public (2016)

In March 2016, CEO Fredrik Wester stated in an interview with Di Digital that Paradox Interactive had launched the

IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

process. The company stated their intention to complete this process within a year, with the goal of spreading ownership between employees and players of their games and "looking for long-term owners who want to take part in the Paradox journey". On 31 May 2016, trading in Paradox Interactive commenced on

Nasdaq First North Nasdaq First North Growth Market is a division of Nasdaq Nordic and an alternative stock exchange (legally a multilateral trading facility) for smaller companies in Europe. The market place Nya Marknaden in Stockholm changed name to First North in ...

under the ticker PDX. The initial price offering was () valuing the company at (). Paradox set aside about 5% of the shares to allocate to

Tencent Tencent Holdings Ltd. ( zh, s=腾讯, p=Téngxùn) is a Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational technology Conglomerate (company), conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimed ...

, valued at about (). Wester continued to hold 33.3% of the shares of the company, while investment firm Spiltan held to 30.5% of the shares. Finances created by the offering allowed Paradox to begin several acquisitions of various studios and intellectual properties.

Continued development (2017–present)

Paradox announced the opening of its third internal studio, Paradox Thalassic located in Malmö, Sweden, in May 2017. The studio was established to develop

mobile games A mobile game is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone (feature phone or smartphone), tablet, PDA to handheld game conso ...

based on Paradox's properties. Paradox Interactive's financial performance for 2017 saw a 24% year-on-year increase in revenues to , and a 10% year-on-year increase in profits to . Wester stepped down as CEO in August 2018, but he remained executive chairman of the board while board member Ebba Ljungerud took his place as CEO. The move was billed as giving Wester more ability to look for growth opportunities while Ljungerud handled the day-to-day operations of the company, which had since grown to about 300 employees since its foundation. In March 2019, Paradox announced the opening of Paradox Tectonic, located in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland, Cali ...

, with Rod Humble serving as studio lead. Another new studio, Paradox Tinto, was opened in June 2020 in Barcelona, Spain, led by Johan Andersson to oversee '' Europa Universalis IV'' development and other Paradox grand strategy titles. In June 2020, Paradox became one of the first major publishers to announce support for unionization efforts when it concluded a labour agreement with its employees in its Swedish divisions and the Swedish unions

Swedish Confederation of Professional Associations The Swedish Confederation of Professional Associations (, Saco) is a confederation of 21 independent professional association A professional association (also called a professional body, professional organization, or professional society) is a g ...

and Unionen. In 2021, Paradox committed to overhauling its online forums, due to challenges in engaging its community. On 1 September 2021, Ljungerud resigned as CEO "due to differing views on the company's strategy going forward," with the then executive chairman of the board and former CEO Fredrik Wester taking her place and resigning from his position on the board. Following this, Håkan Sjunnesson, at the time deputy chairman of the board, became chairman. At the end of September 2021, the company announced it was cancelling development on several unannounced products to focus on "proven game niches", leaving 15 projects in development. According to Wester, the company's focus remains on their strategy and simulation games, and that they have "sharpened our pipeline further to ensure that the projects with the highest potential have the resources necessary for the best possible development". That same September, Swedish publication ''Breakit'' reported that an internal survey from Paradox employees found 44% of the 133 responds had reported some type of "mistreatment" in the company, and that many respondents believed there was a "culture of silence" at the firm. The following month, a report from ''

Svenska Dagbladet (, "The Swedish Daily News"), abbreviated SvD, is a daily List of Swedish newspapers, newspaper published in Stockholm, Sweden. History and profile The first issue of appeared on 18 December 1884. During the beginning of the 1900s the pap ...

'' further investigated this situation, finding that the female employees believed the company was "clearly male-dominated", and with several men in senior management positions in roles involved in harassment and mistreatment of employees. ''

Eurogamer ''Eurogamer'' is a British video game journalism website launched in 1999 alongside parent company Gamer Network. In 2008, it started in the formerly eponymous trade fair EGX (Eurogamer Expo until 2013) organised by its parent company. Fr ...

'' also spoke to Paradox employees, confirming these findings. Paradox replied to these reports that while the prior survey was too small a fraction of their total employee count to take action on, they have hired an independent auditor to review their company culture, starting with their Sweden operations. In February 2022, they published the audit on its webpage. The company launched Paradox Arc in August 2022 as a new publishing label aimed for games from smaller studios.

Studios

Paradox operates five internal studios:

Former

Video games

Paradox is the publisher of its internally developed single and multiplayer grand strategy games series; '' Imperator: Rome'', '' Crusader Kings III'', '' Europa Universalis IV'', ''

Victoria 3 ''Victoria 3'' is a 2022 grand strategy video game developed by Paradox Development Studio and published by Paradox Interactive. It is a sequel to the 2010 game ''Victoria II'' and was released on 25 October 2022. Gameplay ''Victoria 3'' spa ...

'', '' Hearts of Iron IV'', and '' Stellaris.'' Each of these franchises accounts for different periods of time in human history - the founding of the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

, the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

, the

early modern period The early modern period is a Periodization, historical period that is defined either as part of or as immediately preceding the modern period, with divisions based primarily on the history of Europe and the broader concept of modernity. There i ...

, the

Victorian era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the reign of Queen Victoria, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. Slightly different definitions are sometimes used. The era followed the ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

and a

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

-oriented "future" space age, respectively. Paradox has also published games for 1C Company, Arrowhead Game Studios, BattleGoat Studios, NeocoreGames, TaleWorlds Entertainment, and Frictional Games.

Board games

At the 2018 PDXCon, Paradox announced it was working with board game designers and publishers to produce a number of board games based on their video game properties, including ''Europa Universalis'', ''Crusader Kings'', ''Hearts of Iron'', and ''Cities: Skylines''. A board game version of Hearts of Iron created by Steamforged Games was announced on December 13th.

Events

PDXCON

Prior to 2016, Paradox Interactive had invited members of the gaming industry press to Stockholm to preview upcoming titles at an annual press day. Starting in 2017, Paradox transformed this to a weekend event opened to the public called PDXCon. PDXCon 2017 was held in May at the Gamla Riksarkivet in Stockholm, and included four hundred gamers alongside the press at the event. For the 2018 PDXCon in May, Paradox expanded the public attendance to 800 gamers. The 2019 PDXCon was held in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

in October 18–20, 2019, giving them access to a larger space and more ready access for gamers to attend. On April 21, 2022, Paradox announced via Twitter that PDXCON would be returning in September.

Paradox Insider

Due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

Paradox chose to replace PDXCON with virtual events called Paradox Insider. The first occured on June 13, 2020 and would air in partnership with Guerrilla Collective after their showcase. On February 11, 2021, Paradox announced that Insider would return again on March 13, 2021, and would be part of the Game Dev Direct showcase.

Game characteristics

Grand strategy

Paradox Interactive has generally focused on publishing grand strategy games made by its subsidiary,

. Grand strategy games are often played on a real-world map, marked by the use of standard real-time elements but with an ability to make any and all changes even while paused. The focus of each game is different, but generally a player must manage the economy, commerce, internal politics, diplomacy, technological development, and military forces of a nation. The games are usually

nonlinear In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system (or a non-linear system) is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Nonlinear problems are of interest to engineers, biologists, physicists, mathe ...

with no set victory condition. Examples of these grand strategy games in Paradox' catalogue include the '' Crusader Kings'' series, the ''

'' series, the '' Victoria'' series, the '' Hearts of Iron'' series, and '' Stellaris''.

Other genres

Along with grand strategy games, Paradox's catalogue has come to include simulation and management games, such as the '' Cities in Motion'' series and '' Cities: Skylines'', and

s such as '' Pillars of Eternity''. The publisher has ventured into other genres in the period between 2011 and 2014, but have since shifted focus back to these three core areas; according to Shams Jorjani, the vice president of business development, "We had this vision of people buying a Paradox game without knowing what the game was; that 'Paradox' should be a guarantee for a type of game experience". The period from 2011 to 2014 was marked by the publication of the first '' Magicka'' game in 2011, itself having been greenlit for publishing after seeing the success of the '' Mount & Blade'' series in 2008, which did not quite fit their grand strategy profile. ''Magicka'' had been successful, so between 2013 and 2014, the publisher greenlit a number of different titles from across a number of genres, which, on retrospective, the publisher found that they could not properly manage or promote well, leading them to limit themselves to three core genres.

Post-content model

Paradox supports games following their release with a long tail of updates to their games often several years after release. Some of these are free updates or

(DLC), and many add large game changing elements to the game and the way it is played. Paradox board member Ebba Ljungerud justified this part of their business model by stating "We want to make really great games for our fans, and we can't do that if we don't charge something for the development". Players have complained of Paradox' tendency to have a large number of paid DLC for its games, some of which become required to be able to play with others. This can raise the effective cost of the game: for example, ''Crusader Kings 2'' released in 2012 had 24 DLC packs by 2018, bring the apparent price of the game from to . Ljungerud has stated that it knows this approach to DLC is unconventional and inundating for newcomers and can be improved. However, Wester asserted their current approach is a "fair and balanced" method, as alongside the paid DLC, they also release free updates that add new gameplay features and quality-of-life improvements to the title, so that all owners of the game can benefit from this approach regardless if they purchase the DLC. Paradox trialed a subscription model approach to the extended content for these games, first as a limited beta in 2020 with ''Europa Universalis 4'', before releasing a full subscription program in February 2021 for ''Crusader Kings 2''. A subscription gives access to all DLC for the subscribed title for a monthly subscription fee. A Paradox spokesman said this was "an affordable way for players to experience the entire ''Crusader Kings 2'' catalogue without having to weigh which items they would prefer to purchase". A full subscription program for ''Europa Universalis 4'' was issued in March 2021, for ''Hearts of Iron 4'' on 15 February 2022 and for ''Stellaris'' on 27 February 2024.

Modding

Paradox tries to make games that are open and easy to edit ( moddable), from tweaking a saved game to creating a new scenario. Modding can be accomplished with simple tools and basic knowledge of scripting. To assist modders to figure out how to edit the game on their own, the Paradox forums provide fan-compiled libraries of "how to" advice. Paradox worked with

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

to develop Paradox Mods, an open modding platform that allows the same user-created mods to work both on Microsoft Windows and

Xbox One The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third console in the Xbox#Consoles, Xbox series. It was first released in North America, parts of Europe, Austra ...

system, with initial testing being done through ''

Surviving Mars ''Surviving Mars'' is a city building survival video game initially developed by the Bulgarian studio Haemimont Games, and later by Abstraction Games, and published by Paradox Interactive. It was released on Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, P ...

'' starting in February 2019.

Acquisitions

White Wolf

Paradox Interactive purchased

White Wolf Publishing White Wolf Entertainment AB, formerly White Wolf Publishing, was an American roleplaying game and book publisher. The company was founded in 1991 as a merger between Lion Rampant (game publisher), Lion RampantWorld of Darkness ''World of Darkness'' is a series of tabletop role-playing games, originally created by Mark Rein-Hagen for White Wolf Publishing. It began as an annual line of five games in 1991–1995, with ''Vampire: The Masquerade'', ''Werewolf: The Apocaly ...

'' and '' Vampire: The Masquerade'', from CCP Games in October 2015. White Wolf became a self-operating subsidiary of Paradox Interactive with its own management and goals. In January 2017, White Wolf announced its partnership with video game publisher

Focus Home Interactive Focus Entertainment (formerly Focus Home Interactive) is a French video game publisher based in Paris. It is a subsidiary of PulluP Entertainment Group. Founded in 1996, Focus has published and distributed original titles such as ''Sherlock Holm ...

for the video game adaptation of '' Werewolf: The Apocalypse'', a tabletop role-playing game set in the World of Darkness. It was developed by the game development studio Cyanide and released on PC and consoles on February 4, 2021, as '' Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood''. In November 2018, as a result of backlash generated by material pertaining to " murder of gay Chechens" published in a ''Vampire: The Masquerade Fifth Edition'' source book, it was announced that White Wolf would no longer function as an entity separate from its parent company, and would cease developing and publishing products internally. In May 2025, Jason Carl, Brand Marketing Manager at White Wolf, announced the company's return as the official licensing and publishing entity for all World of Darkness transmedia properties.

Studio acquisitions

Paradox Interactive acquired the Dutch game development studio Triumph Studios, the creator of the '' Age of Wonders'' and ''

Overlord An overlord in the English feudal system was a lord of a manor who had subinfeudated a particular manor, estate or fee, to a tenant. The tenant thenceforth owed to the overlord one of a variety of services, usually military service or ...

'' series, in June 2017. The acquisition was considered to be a good fit by both commentators and the involved companies, based on similarities in product genres and corporate culture. In January 2018, Paradox acquired a 33% minority stake in developer Hardsuit Labs, the developers of '' Blacklight: Retribution'', at a cost of . Paradox Interactive acquired Harebrained Schemes, the maker of '' Shadowrun Returns'' and the Paradox-published game ''

BattleTech ''BattleTech'' is a wargaming and military science fiction franchise launched by FASA Corporation in 1984, acquired by WizKids in 2001, which was in turn acquired by Topps in 2003; and published since 2007 by Catalyst Game Labs. The trademark ...

'', in June 2018 for a fixed price of US$7,500,000 and 25% of the earnings of Harebrained Schemes excluding publishing cost in the next 5 years, to the extent they exceed the fixed purchasing price. Paradox acquired Paris-based Playrion Game Studio, specializing in mobile game development, in July 2020, making it its eighth internal studio. Paradox stated the acquisition will help them expand into the mobile games marketplace. Also in July 2020, Paradox acquired Iceflake Studios out of

Tampere Tampere is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Pirkanmaa. It is located in the Finnish Lakeland. The population of Tampere is approximately , while the metropolitan area has a population of approximately . It is the most populous mu ...

, Finland, which had previously been developing ''Surviving the Aftermath'' with Paradox as the publisher. On February 6, 2025 Paradox announced their acquisition of Bulgarian studio Haemimont Games who had previously developed

, which is published by Paradox, and games in the Tropico and Jagged Alliance series. Paradox stated the acquisition would assist their growth in the management game genre.

Intellectual property acquisitions

In January 2019, Paradox acquired the intellectual property rights to the '' Prison Architect'' series from developer Introversion Software, with plans to continue to expand more games in the same theme. Introversion had stated they had taken the series as far as they could and believed that Paradox's purchase would ultimately help the series in the future. In March 2022, Paradox acquired ''Academia: School Simulator'' from Squeaky Wheel Studio.

References

External links

Official website

Official Paradox wiki
{{Authority control Paradox Interactive Video game publishers Swedish companies established in 1999 Video game companies established in 1999 Companies based in Stockholm Video game companies of Sweden Tencent 2016 initial public offerings Companies listed on Nasdaq Stockholm