Paradox Interactive

Lore & Background

Paradox Interactive's origins started with Target Games, a Sweden-based board game company. Target ventured into video games and by the late 1990s folded into bankruptcy. The video game division spun off into Paradox Entertainment, which published video game adaptations of Target's games. Between 2000 and 2004, Paradox Entertainment released the first titles of several grand strategy games, including Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun, and Crusader Kings. After a failed ambitious project, Fredrik Wester and Theodore Bergquist bought out the video games division, retaining Paradox Development Studio and all its developers, forming Paradox Interactive in 2004.

In Their Own Story

The monitor glows amber in a darkened room, the only light in a Stockholm apartment at 2 a.m. A half-empty mug of cold coffee sits beside a mechanical keyboard. On screen, a map of the Indian Ocean stretches across the interface, dotted with the tiny flags of trading companies. The player's cursor hovers over a trade node in Malacca, the tooltip showing a +12% income modifier if they redirect their fleet. They could declare war on the Sultanate. They could instead send a merchant. They choose the merchant. Outside, snow begins to fall on Södermalm. Inside, a two-hundred-year-old trade war is won with a single click, and the only sound is the soft click of a key and the low hum of the hard drive.

Reader's Guide

Paradox is best known for releasing strategy video games, especially historically-themed grand strategy games, and has published strategy games in different settings, as well as games of other genres such as role-playing video games and management simulators. They typically continue development of games after initial release with downloadable content, and are known for creating games that are easy to mod. Outside of video games, Paradox has created board games based on several of its titles, and owns the rights to the tabletop role-playing game series World of Darkness since purchasing White Wolf Publishing in 2015. They hold an annual convention, PDXCON, which has been open to the public since 2017.

Did You Know?

• Paradox Interactive's logo is based on the skeleton of a platypus, originally given the scientific name ornithorhynchus paradoxus.
• The company's first title to break 1 million copies sold was Magicka from Arrowhead Game Studios.
• Cities: Skylines, published by Paradox, sold over 12 million copies by June 2022.
• Paradox Interactive went public on Nasdaq First North in May 2016 under the ticker PDX.