Paradox Interactive CEO Fredrik Wester has confirmed that grand strategy game Victoria 3 and 4X strategy game Age of Wonders 4 have taken important steps towards becoming mainstays in the publisher’s portfolio as it fully dedicates itself to the strategy and management genres.
The statement was shared as part of the company’s annual financial report for 2025, which also reveals that the publisher’s in-house studios are open to experimenting with tools linked to generative AI.
Paradox Interactive Goes All-In on Strategy and Management Games
“[…]Victoria 3 and Age of Wonders 4 took important steps in their development, with both games having established a stable player base and level of revenue,” CEO Fredrik Wester noted. “This makes it possible to continue developing them for a long time to come.”
The two titles received highly acclaimed DLC as part of the yearly season pass model that is gradually extending to more and more of the publisher’s games, seeing more players not only returning, but also sticking around for longer.
Wester describes 2025 as “an intensive year for Paradox,” which saw the company finally releasing and swiftly writing down the troubled Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, the last major foray into genres outside of its traditional area of expertise.
Although its indie publishing arm Paradox Arc will still pursue smaller, more experimental projects, Paradox Interactive is sticking to what it knows best for the foreseeable future.
“Going forward, our pipeline is entirely focused on strategy and management games – genres in which we have deep expertise and where we know we can create the greatest value for our players,” Wester explains.
“Almost all these projects are also being developed in our own studios. At the same time, we have both the capacity and the ambition to grow beyond this, and we continuously evaluate further opportunities to expand our long-term pipeline of projects.”
Paradox Interactive’s 2025 annual report also briefly touches on its in-house studios’ stance on generative AI, the use of which has proven quite divisive among video game fans.
“Several studios have also worked to parallelize their development in order to better meet players’ demand for high-quality DLC with varying scope of content. The company’s game studios also continually experiment with new tools in game development, including those linked to generative AI.”
The document doesn’t further touch upon how generative AI tools might be used, but while it’s more than justified to be wary about AI slop making it into the games that eat up countless hours of our time, it’s worth keeping in mind that the technology can prove useful during a game’s actual development.
2026 is also shaping up to be a busy year for Paradox, with fresh content for its grand strategy games, including last year’s Europa Universalis V and potentially more on the horizon.
For the latest gaming news, follow GameWatcher on BlueSky, check out our videos on YouTube. We sometimes include affiliate links in our posts, which grants us a small commission, thank you. Please support independent Games Media. ❤️
