Paradox CEO admits company “made wrong decisions on many projects” following Life By You cancellation

Paradox Interactive looks like a dice-rolling company from the outside, as was the case earlier this year when it canceled its Sims competitor Life By You and laid off its developers, weeks after the project missed its release date.

“It is clear that we have made the wrong decisions, especially on many projects that are outside our core business, and this needs to change,” CEO Fredrik Wester said in the interim financial report published today.


“We are ending the second quarter of the year with mixed emotions. On the one hand, our core business performed very well, but on the other hand, we have made the difficult decision to cancel the launch of Life by You because the game will not meet our expectations,” Wester wrote in his mid-year report.

Operating profit in Q2 2024 was down 90% year-on-year due to the 208 million crown (around £14.9 million) development cost reduction for Life By You. Paradox Interactive still made a profit due to strong performance from what they consider their “core games”, including new expansions for games like Stellaris, Victoria 3 and Europa Universalis IV.

Wester writes that the publisher has made “big changes to the way we invest in risky projects, meaning we haven’t started any new projects with a combination of high risk and high cost like Life by You since 2021.”

Life By You isn’t the only troubled project to come under Paradox’s belt in recent years. Cities: Skylines 2 was a long-awaited sequel to a beloved game, but it launched with bugs, performance issues, and design choices that alienated many of its players. Lamplighters League was a $22 million flop that led to layoffs and a parting of ways with longtime development partner Harebrained Schemes. Bloodlines 2 was in development hell for years, only recently resurfacing under the leadership of The Chinese Room. Prison Architect 2, which somehow never made a mention in that financial report, was delayed from May to September, leading to longtime development partner Double Eleven leaving the project and a new studio joining to finish the game.

Wester aims to paint a silver lining around the difficult quarter by saying that “the core games developed in-house continue to deliver good content that players enjoy,” but oh boy. You'd think the dice rolls wouldn't come up with so many snake eyes in a row.

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