Paradox CEO admits company made "wrong calls in several projects" in wake of Life By You's cancellation

Paradox Interactive appear from the outside to be a company run by dice roll. That was the case earlier this year when they cancelled Sims competitor Life By You and closed its developers, weeks after it had missed a project release date.

"It is clear that we have made the wrong calls in several projects, especially outside of our core, and this must change," writes CEO Fredrik Wester in an interim financial report, released today.

"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," writes Wester in the mid-year report.

Due to writing down the development cost of 208 million kronor (around £14.9 million) for Life By You, operating profit in Q2 2024 fell 90% year-on-year. Paradox Interactive still turned a profit due to strong performance from what they consider their "core games", including new expansions released for the likes of Stellaris, Victoria 3 and Europa Universalis IV.

Wester writes that the publisher has "made major changes to how we invest in riskier projects, which means that we have not started new projects with the same combination of high risk and high costs as Life by You" since 2021.

Life By You isn't the only troubled project to fall under Paradox in recent years. Cities: Skylines 2 was a long-awaited sequel to a beloved game, but launched with bugs, performance issues and design choices which alienated many of its players. Lamplighters League was a $22 million flop that led to layoffs and a parting of ways with long-time development partner Harebrained Schemes. Bloodlines 2 has been in development hell for years, only recently resurfacing under the leadership of The Chinese Room. Prison Architect 2 - somehow not mentioned at all in this financial report - was delayed from May until September, leading to long-time development studio partner Double Eleven to leave the project and a new studio to come onboard to finish the game.

Wester aims to paint a silver lining around the rough quarter, by noting that "in-house developed core games continue to deliver good content that players have appreciated," but yeesh. You'd think dice rolls wouldn't come up snake eyes so many times in a row.