Paradox Interactive are continuing their quest for world domination as they've taken a 100% share of developer Harebrained Schemes.
From the press release:
STOCKHOLM and SEATTLE – June 5, 2018 – Paradox Interactive, a global publisher and developer of interactive entertainment, today announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire 100% of the shares in Harebrained Holdings Inc, sole owner of Harebrained Schemes, LLC, from Harebrained Bag of Holding Inc. Paradox pays a fixed purchase price of US$7,500,000 at the time of acquisition plus an additional purchase price corresponding to 25% of the acquired business’ earnings before publishing costs over the next 5 years to the extent such earnings exceed the fixed purchase price. The deal is expected to close by Thursday, June 7, 2018.
Hopefully this will be good news for us, since typically Harebrained Schemes has supported Linux quite well. While Paradox Interactive seem like a pretty good publisher, not all their published titles are on Linux of course, but it seems like a good match.
Hopefully soon Harebrained Schemes will deliver on the BATTLETECH Linux port, which has been promised as a high priority on their post-launch roadmap.
So now Paradox Interactive own White Wolf Publishing (World of Darkness, Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse), Triumph Studios (Age of Wonders series, Overlord series) and Harebrained Schemes (Shadowrun series, BATTLETECH) while having their own development studio as well for their grand strategy games. Perhaps Haemimont Games will be next, given they're already partnered for Surviving Mars.
It feels like they're building up towards something, given they have their own Paradox Launcher now too which is "Coming soon for Linux" according to the download page.
What are your thoughts?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Schattenspiegel Jun 6, 2018
Sure Paradox have some great games in their portfolio and quite a few Linux versions, but they also deeply into this telemetry and required user accounts crap + have a tendency to butcher their games for a lot of dlcs.
In short I always have a sour taste in my mouth when dealing with the publisher side of their games (of which I unfortunately tend to like quite a lot). If they continue further down this road I might need to consider putting them on my blacklist.
On the other hand best wishes to the HBS team! You won me over with the Shadowrun titles and I can not wait to get my hands on Battletech. Hope you guys will continue to make such great games in the future.
Last edited by Shmerl on 7 June 2018 at 2:18 am UTC
Kimyrielle Jun 7, 2018
Quoting: Schattenspiegelbut they also deeply into this telemetry and required user accounts crap
Can you qualify that? IMHO the "required user accounts crap" is wrong. I own CK2, EU4, Tyranny, PoE and none of these games forces me to have an account. If I have one I can sign in, but I was never forced. IIRC one of the games asked me if I wanted to provide telemetry data, and I assume that when I rejected this rejection was honored. So is this statement of yours based on facts or just hearsay?
Hope they still offer Linux support and hope they don't affect Hairbrainded's stance on it.
Stupendous Man Jun 7, 2018
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