Paradox admits it needs “to do better” in Q1 report

Finances look stable, though
Paradox Interactive

Paradox Interactive, renowned as a developer and publisher of strategy games, has posted an interim financial report covering the first quarter of the calendar year 2024, in which CEO Fredrik Wester admitted that the company has “areas where we need to do better, not least, our games must maintain a good and consistent quality.”

In particular, he mentioned the ongoing affairs around Cities: Skylines 2, which recently had to refund a DLC in order to curb player backlash. “We are well aware that lately we have not met the players’ expectations in this area; this will not stay the same,” Wester wrote.

Overall, Wester sees the company in a good position for the rest of the year: “Our core business has held a strong pace during the first period of the year, with good underlying sales, which gives a good result. We have a very strong foundation with a large cash position and a solid recurring cash flow. This gives us a good position for taking advantage of the opportunities that open up in a games market that is turbulent at the moment.”

It looks like Paradox’s and C Prompt Games’ recently released turn-based 4X game Millennia, which got a mixed reception, won’t suffer the same fate as The Lamplighters League in 2023. Wester wrote that “it's clear that many players appreciated the game's core mechanics, and we believe that there is a lot of potential to develop.”

He also indicated that Millennia was an experiment of sorts for Paradox, which may mean that the company is planning further advances into this genre.

In 2024, Paradox will launch Foundry and its The Sims competitor Life by You as Early Access titles and has expansions for its staple grand strategy catalog planned. Overall, it’s got ten games in the pipeline.

Aside from the “big three” – Crusader Kings 3, Hearts of Iron 4, and Stellaris – Paradox gave credit to the original Cities: Skylines as well as the controversial sequel as revenue drivers, which suggests that Cities: Skylines 2 is generating solid income despite the drama around it.

Compared to the same period last year, Paradox’s operating profit decreased by 1% with very similar revenues – that’s stable, alright.


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Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg