Paradox ceases work on Imperator: Rome temporarily, won't release anything for it this year

Ahead of the digital PDXCON planned for later this month, Paradox's segment and portfolio manager for strategy games Bevan Davies posted an update on the official forum to explain organizational changes at the studio. Davies said that, with over 150 developers at Paradox Development Studios now, a restructuring has seen them split into three teams—each working on separate projects. Unfortunately, none of those projects is Imperator: Rome.

Davies explained that "we realized that there was a need to bring reinforcement for a couple of the projects at PDS, and given where Imperator was at in the run up to 2.0's launch, we decided that after the launch of the update we would move people from Imperator to these other projects." Though nobody's working on Imperator: Rome at the moment, and there won't be "any new content coming out in 2021" for it, the plan is to return eventually.

"Right now we're working on plans to regrow the team for Imperator and continue development," Davies wrote, "but for the short term we needed to focus our efforts on these other projects."

Those other projects are under the aegis of three Paradox Development Studios nicknamed PDS Green, PDS Red, and PDS Gold. Each is working on the development of unannounced games ("at least one of them you'll discover more about at PDXCON this month") as well as maintaining one existing game. PDS Green handles Stellaris, PDS Red is on Crusader Kings 3, and PDS Gold is tackling Hearts of Iron 4.

Europa Universalis 4 is currently the responsibility of external studio Paradox Tinto, which opened last year. Its latest expansion, Leviathan, hasn't been well-received, with the lowest user rating of anything on Steam, currently 8% positive. Meanwhile, a content designer on Hearts of Iron 4 has said that player toxicity is driving Paradox's developers away from its forums.