How Paradox weathered delays, developer splits, and Life By You's cancellation

gamesindustry.biz:

Paradox Interactive has gone through a rough patch over the past year.

After several delays, its highly awaited Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 changed hands in September 2023, with development moving from Hardsuit Labs to The Chinese Room.

Then a month later Paradox wrote down the development costs of The Lamplighters League just a week after launch, also confirming layoffs took place at its developer Harebrained Schemes. A week later, the two parties announced their split, with Paradox having previously acquired Harebrained in 2018.

Fast forward to 2024, and Paradox announced the cancellation of its life sim Life by You in June, as well as the closure of its developer, Paradox Tectonic. The Swedish company's profits dropped 90% year-on-year off the back of this announcement.

Since then, Paradox also announced a third delay for Cities Skylines 2 on consoles, and that Prison Architect 2 was postponed indefinitely.

We sat down with deputy CEO Mattias Lilja last week, who didn't shy away from addressing the issues the company has run into with Life By You, culture changes, and its overall strategy. We also discussed the situation with Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, which you can read here.

"Luck in a sense has to do with things we can and can't control – and I'm interested in the parts that we can," Mattias Lilja says as we mention Paradox's string of bad luck and how it intends to course correct. "And it has a lot to do with: what games do we start and how do we start them? And how do we finance things?"

When taking risks on a project – taking the example of launching Paradox's indie publishing branch, Arc – funding needs to be carefully considered, Lilja points out.

"And then if we're gonna start something that is bigger, it needs to be squarely in our circular competence," he continues. "It needs to be a Cities or a Cities-like, or a GST [Grand Strategy game]. Then we know enough to take risks in a smart way. Because even if we release a game like Victoria