Fredrik Wester, the man who has directed Paradox Interactive for roughly fifteen years, is stepping down from his role as company CEO. The studio head, who many will recognise as the face of the company and a prominent voice in the industry, is moving into a new role where he can focus on building new "business areas," working where he "can shine and do what is actually of most value to the company."
Replacing Wester is Ebba Ljungerud, who has more experience leading large companies, which as she explained to Games Industry, should come into play with respects to her new role.
"Our games have grown quite a lot in the last couple of years, and I see that trend will continue," Ljungerud told the site. "That will bring some challenges for us, and also some opportunities. We've also seen quite a lot of consolidation in the industry in the last couple of years, really. And I don't think any of us sees that that will go away. So that will also be important to us going forward. And with my background, having worked a fair bit with merger and acquisition integrations, that will probably be a part of this as well."
Paradox has been growing steadily for a number of years, building on their own successful portfolio of games with the acquisition of new properties and partnerships with smaller studios. It's an approach that has served them well, and they intend to continue in that vein as well exploring new areas.
"We will continue to serve that userbase, that fanbase that we built, the millions of people who play our games every month," Wester added. "But we will also start looking at new ways to maybe find new audiences, with new games that are well produced [and] rhyme really well with the values we have at Paradox today."