Let me be very clear on this: I'm a huge fan of the grand strategy games that Paradox's internal studios are responsible for. Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis, I cannot get enough of that shit. But Paradox is a business comprised of two halves. And the other--a publisher of other studios’ games--is currently fucking up everything they touch.
As successful as the company's internally-developed titles have been, the games Paradox have scouted, signed and pledged to release over the last few years have been a succession of rakes stepped upon rakes stepped upon rakes. Things weren't always this way! Paradox has been publishing other studios’ games for decades now, and over that time helped release everything from Mount & Blade to the Majesty series to Cities: Skylines. Good games!
Lately though, yikes, things are bad. And they're bad in increasingly explosive and embarrassing ways. Let's look back on some recent dramas:
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, in development since 2016, has redefined the term "development hell". The RPG hasn't just been completely retooled, it's moved studios altogether, and in 2023 took the unprecedented step of offering pre-order refunds for fans sick of waiting for the game to come out.
The Lamplighters League, a turn-based tactics game released in 2023, was publicly trashed by Paradox after release. Most of the staff of developer Harebrained (the same team behind the excellent Battletech) were laid off, before Paradox split with the studio altogether, citing "strategic and creative priorities".
Star Trek: Infinite was a 2023 space strategy game based on Paradox's own excellent Stellaris. It ended up with pretty average reviews, most of them centred on the game's litany of launch bugs and glitches.
Millennia, a 4X strategy game, was released earlier this year and absolutely stank. It was in no way fit for release. But Paradox shuffled it out there anyway.
UPDATE June 18, 2024: Life By You, a game that was supposed to take on The Sims, even going as far as hiring the former head of EA's The Sims team, was originally slated to launch in Early Access on June 4. In May, that release was cancelled. Today, the whole game has been cancelled. It was the debut game from Paradox Tectonic, meaning it's a first-party thing and not a publisher slip-up like everything else in this post, but given the timeline and the reasons stated for its cancellation (which I'll post below, emphasis mine), I thought I'd include it here anyway.
Hi all,
Sadly, we’ve decided to cancel the release of our long-awaited life sim Life by You. This was an incredibly difficult call to make and is a clear failure on Paradox’s part to meet both our own and the community's expectations. We realize this raises some large questions; here we hope to shed at least some light on why we opted to cancel, rather than delay as we communicated earlier.Life by You has been in the works for a long time and we’ve been very excited about the promise and the potential of this game. Our hope was always that it would be able to leave a mark in this exciting and new genre for us. That’s why we’ve opted to delay it twice, to give the studio and the game a fair shot at realizing the potential we saw. For each delay we made, we've seen incremental improvements, which in hindsight may well have led us to focus on details rather than the whole picture.
A few weeks back, we decided to hold off on an Early Access release in order to re-evaluate Life by You, as we still felt that the game was lacking in some key areas. Though a time extension was an option, once we took that pause to get a wider view of the game, it became clear to us that the road leading to a release that we felt confident about was far too long and uncertain. This is not to say the game has not shown any promising qualities; Life by You had a number of strengths and the hard work of a dedicated team that went into realizing them. However, when we come to a point where we believe that more time will not get us close enough to a version we would be satisfied with, then we believe it is better to stop. This is obviously tough and disappointing for everyone who poured their time and enthusiasm into this project, especially when our decision comes so late in the process.
At the end of the day, our job is to release games that are fun, interesting, and challenging for our players, and our every decision should be taken with that purpose in mind. When we get that right, we earn our pay. So, how do we ensure we don’t find ourselves here again? Honestly, there are no real guarantees. Games are difficult to get right, and we’ll definitely make mistakes, which, as these things go, always become painfully apparent in hindsight, but still shouldn’t reach this kind of magnitude regardless. We have to take a long and hard look at what led us here and see what changes we have to make to become better. In the end, our mission remains the same, and we’ll continue to take whatever steps we need to do just that.
Sincerely,
Mattias Lilja, Deputy CEO of Paradox Interactive
Original story follows:
And finally, there's Cities: Skylines II, the reason I'm writing this blog today. The first game is one of the company's biggest ever publishing hits! Yet the 2023 sequel, which should have been a tap-in for Paradox, has been a catastrophe. The game was essentially released unfinished and suffered from a litany of performance woes; I encountered one so bad last year that it hard-crashed my PC to the bios screen, something that had never happened to me before in my life.
Things somehow got even worse last week when the premium DLC release Beach Properties arrived in such a busted state that developers Colossal Order had to pull it, refund everyone who had bought it, announce that it'll be re-released as free DLC, then make one of the most lengthy development apologies I have ever seen:
We see and understand the disappointment many of you have expressed after the release of Cities: Skylines II and the recent release of Beach Properties. We asked for your patience and support, and you’ve shown those. In return, we let you down. We thought we could make up for the shortcomings of the game in a timeframe that was unrealistic, and rushed out a DLC that should not have been published in its current form. For all this, we are truly sorry. When we’ve made statements like this one before, it’s included a pledge to keep making improvements, and while we are working on these updates, they haven’t happened at a speed or magnitude that is acceptable, and it pains us that we've now lost the trust of many of you. We want to do better.
The very first thing we’re doing is to compensate those who purchased Beach Properties. We will change the pack to be a free addition to the game, refund it to the extent possible, and provide additional content within the Ultimate Edition. Unfortunately, it will not be possible to offer refunds for Ultimate Edition buyers. This is due to the distribution of the Ultimate Edition across digital and physical storefronts, which create significant complexities for executing a partial refund. We realize that this is far from ideal, especially given the dedication those who have stayed with us since launch have shown. We are committed to repaying that loyalty, and therefore, we will compensate Ultimate Edition holders by adding 3 Creator Packs and 3 Radio Stations which, together, sum up to a value of USD 39.99. This solution hopefully ensures that you, regardless of purchase method, feel you receive fair compensation.
Looking ahead, we also want to make immediate and meaningful changes in the way we approach the game’s development and our communication with you. Firstly, this means a complete focus on improving the base game and modding tools, and secondly, we want to better involve you, the community, as we choose our priorities going forward. We will focus on additional free patches and game updates in the coming months before Colossal Order spends time on new paid content, resulting in a move of the Bridges and Ports Expansion to 2025. In addition, the aforementioned Creator Packs are being produced independently, and will not take any focus away from the work on improving the game. To make sure we focus on the right things, we’re putting together an advisory meeting, where a small group of player representatives, together with Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive, will discuss the development plan for this year. The people in this group are chosen for the size of their following within the community to represent as many people as possible. The teams from Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive will provide them with full transparency and answer any questions and critiques voiced. Our hope is that together with you, our community, we can make sure that we do not repeat the same mistakes we have made in the past and bring this game into a bright future.
These are all different games made by different studios, but most of them have two things in common. The first is that Paradox is responsible for funding, promoting and releasing these games. Sure, development and support for each game is the responsibility of each individual studio, but as publisher with the final say on when these games are released and how they're shaping up, Paradox is where the buck stops!
The second is that the last few releases--criticised heavily for being unfinished, Skylines II especially--didn't need to release when they did. Millennia was a 4X strategy game, Skylines II a city-builder, Infinite a Star Trek tie-in, all niche genres that aren't tied to any kind of release tentpole. They weren't movie adaptations or sports games or Call of Duty. These games should have been given as much time in the oven as they needed to be ready for release.
Instead they were shunted onto the market before they were ready and were duly punished for it. Why? I don't know--this isn't some big expose, sorry--but I would like to point out that for all of Paradox's past publishing success, including 2015's Cities: Skylines, the company went public in 2016, and that all these disastrous releases have come after that decision, a trend that has only accelerated over the past couple of years. So while there shouldn't have been a reason to rush a city-builder out the door (especially when the original game was still releasing expansions and doing well), when you have shareholders to keep happy every time you report some fiscals, maybe there suddenly is!
Anyway, whatever the reason--I'm just speculating here!--Paradox, please, you gotta stop. Take some time with these games, let the studios iron out some kinks, flesh out some design ideas, make sure everything is ready to go before taking people's money. I get that short-term profits are one thing, but they're never as important as your long-term reputation.
