Paradox Interactive acquires Battletech developer Harebrained Schemes

Paradox Interactive announced today that it will be acquiring Harebrained Schemes, developer of Battletech and the recent Shadowrun Returns series. Best known for its grand strategy titles Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings, Paradox first got involved with Harebrained Schemes when it published Battletech. If the deal goes through as expected, Paradox will pay $7.5 million plus 25% of Harebrained Schemes’ earnings in the next five years.

In a press release, Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive, said, “Our recent successful launch of BATTLETECH, our first project together, has been a fantastic collaboration, but the possibilities of what we can do together in the long term now that we’ve joined forces — that’s what has us truly excited.”

Harebrained Schemes will be retaining its management and creative teams while receiving financial and distribution support from Paradox. Up until now, the studio has relied largely on Kickstarter campaigns to fund its projects.

“As the scale of our games has grown and the marketplace has gotten extremely noisy we felt that HBS needed to team up with a company that could provide us the financial stability and marketing expertise that would allow us focus on what we love doing — making great games and stories,” Jordan Weisman, CEO of Harebrained Schemes, said.

Paradox has announced that it will stream a Q&A session with Wester and Weisman “in the near future” on their twitch page, https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive.

You can see what Ron thought of Battletech’s meticulous mech combat in his review.