Paradox CEO acknowledges poor launches, promises 'fewer and better titles' in the future

Paradox Interactive CEO Frederik Wester acknowledged that his company has launched buggy, unfinished or nearly unplayable games in the past, and promised better quality control in the future, in an interview with GameSpy.

The trend of substandard launches will end with 2012's Gettysburg: Armored Warfare, said Wester. That alternate-history shooter, which was developed by Radioactive Software and published by Paradox, launched in March to a poor reception: Reviewers slammed the game for being broken.

"That was terrible. We did not do our homework," said Wester. He added that Paradox "learned a lot from that release" — the publisher canceled four games over the summer, after the bungled launch of Gettysburg, because they weren't up to par.

The reason for shoddy launches in Paradox's past was that the company "simply could not afford to cancel games," according to Wester. "We needed to release the best product we could release at the time in order to get at least some of the cash we invested back," he explained. After attaining success with titles such as Magicka and Crusader Kings 2, Paradox can afford to publish only the games it believes will meet a certain quality standard. The company put together an internal quality assurance team over the past year to help ensure that.

"We're not going to have any more games that are unplayable at release," said Wester. "That's what you'll see from Paradox — fewer and better titles."

Paradox-published games set for release this year include Cities in Motion 2 and Europa Universalis 4.