Paradox Interactive CEO Acknowledges Mistakes, Says “We Made The Wrong Calls In Several Projects”

Cities: Skylines 2 and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 publisher Paradox Interactive has admitted to making a few mistakes recently.

In the companies financial report for January 2024-June 2024, chief executive officer Fredrik Wester acknowledged that mistakes, or “wrong calls,” as he said, were made with recent projects.

The mistake focused on in Wester’s comments is the cancellation of Life By You, a game that would’ve already released in an Early Access form by now, if it had not been cancelled. With Life By You not hitting its July 4 release date, profits plummeted 90% for Paradox.

“We end the second quarter of the year with mixed feelings. On the one hand, our core business has performed very well, but on the other hand, we made the difficult decision to cancel the release of Life by You, as the game would not be able to meet our expectations,” said Wester.

He’s quick to point out that things aren’t all bad, but Life By You’s cancellation still weighs everything else down. “We’ve released several strong expansions with good quality to our core games,” said Wester.

“Which has a positive impact on the top line and provides a good cash flow from operating activities. The bottom line is sadly weighed down by the write-down of Life by You…It is clear that we have made the wrong calls in several projects, especially outside of our core, and this must change.”

Unfortunately for Paradox. Life By You isn’t the only thing that’s causing financial woes. Since launch, Cities: Skylines 2 has not had the kind of bombastic release Paradox would’ve liked, with backlash from players on its poor performance and an indefinite delay for the anticipated console versions.

Then there’s Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, which has been in development for far longer than anyone could’ve anticipated, to the point where Paradox was refunding players with pre-orders from 2023.

To this day it still doesn’t have a release date, and instead have a release window for Fall 2024 under a new developer.

All this to say that there’s more to Paradox’s woes than just Life By You being cancelled, but despite the situation Wester doesn’t see things as dire just yet, and has hope for the future.

“Despite great annoyance at our own mistakes, we have faith. Paradox’s future is bright, but we need to roll up our sleeves and work hard to fully realize the potential.”

Source – [Paradox Interactive via Eurogamer]