Swedish publisher and strategy games specialist Paradox Interactive has announced their earnings for 2018. And it’s their best one yet.
In particular, their fourth quarter for 2018 is a record high for the company, earning SEK 336.9 million (around RM147 million). This is a 51% increase from Q4 2017.
“I am proud and happy to announce that we are now putting our best income quarter on the books,” said Ebba Ljungerud, CEO of Paradox Interactive.
“We do this without having released any new games during the quarter.”
Paradox released six different expansions for its game in Q4 2018, and 16 for the whole year. The focus on developing expansions for existing games like Cities: Skylines, Crusader Kings II, Battletech, Surviving Mars and Europa Universalis IV seems to be working all right.
The big revenues the company is raking also explains why they have been acquiring developers and IPs. Last year, Paradox bought Battletech developers Harebrained Schemes, acquired a stake on Hardsuit Labs (Blacklight: Retribution) which are now working on an unannounced project for Paradox and bought Prison Architect from Introversion Software. The acquisitions last year amounts to 155 million SEK (RM67 million).
For the full year of 2018, Paradox’s revenue recorded at SEK 1,127.7 million (RM493 million), with a profit after tax amounting to SEK 353.9 million (RM154.9 million).
That’s a lot of SEKs.
It’s interesting to see that Paradox’s focus on a long tail for their games, supported with expansions have paid off big. Also, to our knowledge, their record high year did not lead to layoffs unlike some other game companies recently, so that’s great news too.
Source: Paradox Interactive