#paradox interactive

[ziphos123]

Crusader Kings 3 isn’t about global conquest, it’s not about building a dynasty, it’s about creating the most fucked up little guy possible and inflicting him upon the medieval world.

[cultistfred]

[virtualfotodivision]

Ysabella Moore | 10.25.2025 | Vampire The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

Camera by Frans Bouma. Captured using ReShade.

[badass-at-fandoming]

More potential insight into what happened with Hardsuit Labs' version of VtM:B2

So everyone pass around the grains of salt, but what BlueSky user whitequeennv.bsky.social seems possible.

Here is the link of The White Queen's thread, which was a response to someone else commenting on Paradox's mismanagement. The White Queen's account is thin on the ground, but mostly does seem like a gamer with interest in the technicalities of the industry. And GRRM's Lost Lands.

Allegedly, Hardsuit Labs never completed the game, or really made a game. What is a vertical slice? A vertical slice is when the nebulous ideas of a game across various departments meet for the first time to prove that all these ideas are workable. It's a small section of the game that includes all the main assets. All the various bits and bobs unite. It's meant for internal use only, to cement the game vision for the team, and like, technically playable but very much not finished. Read more here. Critically, Hardsuit Labs could obfuscate lack of game content by showing these flashy tidbits to Paradox, other investors, and even marketing employees like Outstar.

Now, as it turns out, I am not good at looking up users on Reddit. These comments are not properly dated and u/nekosplatoon admits their source is a friend of a friend.

More critically and convincingly, what u/nekosplatoon says matches with what Paradox's deputy chief executive officer Mattias Lilja says in this 2024 RockPaperShotgun interview:

"With Hardsuit Labs, we agreed on a vision of what they were gonna make, [and] they had a problem delivering on that," Lilja told me. "We were in agreement, we moved [development] to The Chinese Room and we said, this is the vision and this is what Hardsuit Labs have made. And of course, we gave them quite a lot of freedom to interpret the vision, based on what Hardsuit Labs had made, or change or remove whatever they didn't like.

What White Queen is saying about fake or misleading demos or E3 presentations matches my understanding of the games industry. I won't go so far as saying it's standard practice, but it's been known to happen. Bioware's Anthem did it. For a full post-mortem on Anthem, watch consulting producer Mark Darrah's videos on it (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) or read this article. The most salient paragraph:

“After E3, that’s when it really felt like, ‘Okay, this is the game we’re making,’” said one Anthem developer. “But it still felt like it took a while to get the entire team up to speed. It was also kind of tricky because there were still a lot of question marks. The demo was not actually built properly—a lot of it was fake, like most E3 demos. There was a lot of stuff that was like, ‘Oh are we actually doing this? Do we have the tech for that, do we have the tools for that? To what end can you fly? How big should the world be?’”

Here's the artstation link: https://chaoticenigma.artstation.com/albums/9212037

What White Queen says about carryover between games matches what I understand here too. When a studio makes a game (in the USA at least), all assets are copyrighted. The Chinese Room could not receive a USB stick with all of Hardsuits Lab's work and continue working on the game from there. However, because Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is set in Seattle, a real place, The Chinese Room could reuse assets featuring public landmarks and historical figures--with some tweaking to make theirs an original rendition. Pioneer Square is in both games, because HSL!Pioneer Square is just different enough from TCR!Pioneer Square. That's why Alec Cross or Mr Damp aren't in the game, but Lou is. Switch her name from Lou Grand to Lou Graham, change her Clan, and voila: the Chinese Room has made their own original, copyright-able rendition of Lou Graham, the historical person. I'm guessing juuuust enough is different about Tolly and Dale that they too could manage crossing over.

I debated whether to post White Queen's words here. Like I said up top, it all SEEMS possible. That HSL mismanaged itself into IP loss--that upper management is once again to blame--is a comforting, familiar narrative. This answer is possible and comforting enough to cross-post. I hope it offers some peace to the VtM fans who are still wondering and mourning what could have been.

[wurmholz]

So remember when I made a huge post talking about how white wolf doesn't exist anymore. Uhh...

Well guess it's back? Although I'm not sure if it'll have any changes to the actual content and such because in the article it mostly talks about how it's a recognized ip so they might be doing it for that reason? (or -tinfoil on- to push away heat from themself).

Anyway here's the full thing in case anyone wants to read.

The Wolf Returns - Paradox Interactive

Paradox Interactive is a world leading PC games publisher known for games such as Cities: Skylines, Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings.

[mental-illness-gaming]

Imagine if paradox fuzed their games into one fever-dream amalgamate of a game

All royalty and kingdom stuff of CK3 until you pass the time period where it takes place

Economy and construction of Vic 3

City micromanagement of cities skylines

Of Europa univeralis

Warfare of hoi4

Research enough? Boy are you gonna have a ball when you get to the stellaris space stage

I imagine it would take 20 players to play and have a learning curve more miserable than a Walgreens, Take 100 hours for a single run and make you want to perish for every second of gameplay. The benefits would be incalculable

We could have the zenith of autism

[ambasingresident]

Here's some Rosemin art but HOI4 mod themed (Henry is Dmitry Yazov from TNO, while Ellie is Loji from TFR)

This also counts as a (late) Valentine's and Chinese New Year art, so uh ye. I also drew this as part of my community hub's Valentine's Week event, if yall are interested you're welcome to join my server for more info or tag #THSCValentines2026 on your posts (could be releated to ships or Valentine's in general)

[humantea]

Paradox Interactive needs to stop catering to its scarily large audience of (sometimes not even) borderline fascists and needs to pour more of its money into courting the weird transsexual market