Lamplighters League game studio splits from Paradox after poor sales figures

Harebrained Schemes will no longer be part of Paradox Interactive from January next year. Both companies decided this after the poor sales figures of The Lamplighters League, the most recent game from Harebrained Schemes.

Paradox says he wants to focus on its ‘core niches within strategy and management games’, which would leave no room for a Harebrained Schemes game. The developer therefore splits from the publisher and must now look for a new partner or publisher. Paradox will continue to retain the rights to The Lamplighters League “and other games created by the studio.” Harebrained will also continue to support The Lamplighters League until the end of the year. There is no mention of support after January 2024.

The Lamplighters League is a turn-based strategy game set in 1932. Players must complete missions with up to eleven characters to find ‘the source of all magic’. The game was announced in March and released on October 3. A week after release Paradox indicated that the game’s commercial reception was ‘too weak’, which was called a ‘major disappointment’. “Gaming projects are always risky, but in the end we didn’t deliver what we were supposed to deliver,” said Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester.

For The Lamplighters League, Harebrained Schemes made games such as the Shadowrun series and BattleTech. In 2018, the studio was acquired by Paradox for approximately 6.4 million euros. Since that takeover, only The Lamplighters League has been published.