If you have not already heard, Paradox Development Studios (PDS) has (unfortunately) been making the headlines this week due to its poorly received Europa Universalis IV (EUIV) DLC, Leviathan, released on April 27th, which as of this writing is the *lowest* rated game on Steam at 8%, or Overwhelmingly Negative. Because of a myriad of bugs the DLC introduced, as well as broken game mechanics, players have been more than frustrated with the studio and have expressed that frustration and outrage on the game’s subreddit and the forums on the PDS website. It’s a poor showing for the new Paradox Tinto studio’s first outing under Johan Andersson, the long-time PDS developer behind PDS’ earlier success. Fans now demand more quality and polish from a successful AA/AAA studio like PDS, particularly in light of its latest and relatively clean releases for Crusader Kings III and Stellaris: Nemesis (our review forthcoming). Hopefully Tinto can turn the studio’s most successful and popular game in EUIV around and win back its fans.
That is, however, not the biggest news (as the title may imply). on April 29th, Paradox announced a company reorganization (apparently unrelated to the mess that is it’s latest EUIV release) that appears to have been coming for a while now:
As we’re gearing for PDXCON, I wanted to share with the community some (cool) changes that have been happening at PDS in the past year. As the studio is now 150+ developers strong, and each game team has its own challenges and plans to work with, we felt like we needed to better adapt to our new reality. We also wanted to find a way to stay focused and close to our games as PDS grows ever larger.
To make a long story short and simple: earlier this year, PDS has split into three distinct studios. Internally, we call them PDS Green, PDS Red, and PDS Gold. Each team is in charge of both maintaining existing game(s), and developing new games (unannounced for now, but at least one of them you’ll discover more about at PDXCON this month!). Each also has its own Studio Manager and will grow its own team, with one common objective in mind: making the best strategy games in the world. We’re one big family, and together we’re still Paradox Development Studio. As of now, Green, Red & Gold are only internal names, but we know how interested you are in knowing what’s going on behind the scenes, and some of us might refer to these names during PDXCON, so we wanted to share this with you before you hear the names and get confused as to what it’s referring to.
With three new internal studios (not including Tinto, who were not mentioned in this post), PDS Green, PDS Red, and PDS Gold will now be their own distinct studios within the PDS umbrella, each focused on their own flagship series.
PDS Green is in charge of the development of Stellaris. Rikard Åslund (Zoft), a veteran from the Stellaris team, has taken the lead as studio manager. PDS Green also works with the support of Paradox Arctic, our studio in Umeå.
PDS Red is in charge of the development of Crusader Kings III. They are also working closely with Paradox Thalassic in Malmö. The studio is led by Johanna Uddståhl Friberg (JohannaUF), another veteran of Paradox who you might not know, but who has been Studio Manager for Arctic and has worked on the coordination between all Paradox studios previously.
PDS Gold is in charge of Hearts of Iron IV. The lead of this studio is Thomas Johansson (Besuchov), having been a part of the PDS journey from small to not so small studio and more recently working together with Johanna on studio organizational topics, he’s been delighted to be back working closer to the games he loves.
As you may have noticed, Imperator: Rome (I:R) was not mentioned as one of PDS’ flagship series among Stellaris, CKIII, and HoIIV, with EUIV under the new Tinto studio. This is unfortunate, despite its well-received 2.0 update (read our great review of the 2.0 release by our own Aurumlamina).
You might have noticed that Imperator: Rome isn’t assigned to any of the studios mentioned above. The reason for this is that on a regular basis we analyze the projects we have in development, where they are at, what they are trying to do and also what people and resources we have working on them. As part of this analysis we realized that there was a need to bring reinforcement for a couple of the projects at PDS, and given where Imperator was at in the run up to 2.0’s launch, we decided that after the launch of the update we would move people from Imperator to these other projects. Right now we’re working on plans to regrow the team for Imperator and continue development, but for the short term we needed to focus our efforts on these other projects.
I wanted to break the news now to manage everyone’s expectations: don’t expect much Imperator news at PDXCON, or any new content coming out in 2021. We’ll of course get back to everyone with news about it as long as we have something to share!
Given the rocky release that I:R had, which was also led by Johan Andersson, the game did not see the same success as the other PDS flagship games. Since its release in mid-2019, the game has struggled to rework itself to meet fan expectations, with many saying that the latest 2.0 release is what I:R should have been on launch. Questionable decisions such as the addition of “mana” (a term used for any type of abstracted currency mechanic present in PDS titles that are used for in-game actions, such as diplomatic power in EUIV) a mechanic that is largely despised by the fan community, and also the overall sameness in the nations, research, and religions on launch also caught the ire of fans. While 2.0 has brought many great changes like the new pop mechanics, which caused the game to go from “Mostly Negative” at launch on Steam to “Mostly Positive” since the 2.0 release, it appears to be a case of “too little, too late”.
Now, former PDS Producer for Imperator, Peter “Arheo”, also had a few words to say on the apparent cancellation of continued development on Imperator: Rome, as well:
https://t.co/GhNpDjKzVL
— Arheo (@Arheo_) April 30, 2021
My Imperator adventure is over, but I shall return some day, with even less hair.
While this news is unfortunate, we hope that PDS is taking a hard look at its internal structure and moving to create stronger releases that are better polished, with a greater level of quality, and that are relatively bug-free, as its growing fanbase now expects. We may be saddened by the news of what is seemingly the end of I:R‘s development, but we look forward to what PDS will bring next. We will keep you updated on the upcoming PDXCON on May 21st – May 23rd, where the studio/publisher is apparently teasing the announcement of a new title as well as updates to its current games.
Until next time, keep exploring folks!
Omar is a big fan of 4X games who first found eXplorminate through the podcast, and has been a supporting member of the community since. In addition to 4X games, Omar enjoys Grand Strategy games, city builders, and other turn-based tactical games. Some of his favorite games include Shadow Empire and Stellaris. You may have seen him around as omzh on the site and the Discord, so feel free to say hi to him!