Steam and Epic Store have been courting developers and publishers for exclusive content.
But Paradox Interactive is staying away from the fray. In a recent interview at the PDXCon, Ebba Ljungerud, the CEO of Paradox, chose to be diplomatic with her answer. She said that they’ve worked with both Valve and Epic in the past and will continue to do so.
She said the executives at Epic have been very attentive to their needs and open to their suggestions. Paradox considers both Epic and Steam as crucial partners in bringing their games to the customers.
Meanwhile, Shams Jorjani, chief of business development, said that having more options is not a bad thing. He credited Valve’s influence, through Steam, in advancing the progress of video games in the past 15 years.
He said they think that Valve is their most important partner. Over those 15 years, Valve and Paradox had a very great working relationship. But still, the more, the merrier. With more distribution channels, developers and publishers have more options to reach out to customers.
With Epic Store’s entry as a direct rival for Steam, the competition injected new life into the ecosystem. Jorjani told PCGamesN that it would create more engines and introduce innovations in platforms to build new games.
While game designers have more choices, the stiffer competition also makes it very hard to succeed. However, they would definitely benefit from having multiple storefronts to increase their chances of reaching the right audience.
Jorjani even recognized the success of shooter games Fortnite or PUBG, even if Paradox only makes historical strategy games. The gaming industry will benefit from the windfall of PUBG and Fortnite’s success. Ultimately, they help bring in more people into the ecosystem. Shooter games could become the gateway for people to also try out other titles.
Earlier, Paradox Interactive made Crusader Kings 2 available for free-to-play on Steam. You can download the full game and not the trial version. This is not the first time that Paradox made the game available for free. Crusader Kings 2 was launched in February 2012.
The move was seen as an attempt to promote PDXCon, a Paradox-exclusive event in Berlin. Some 300 people were expected to troop to PDXCon to try out some of the games. The developer said that some fans will be lucky enough to experience the gameplay of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. The highly anticipated game will have a release date of March 2020.
