Triumph Studios Acquired by Paradox Interactive

Triumph Studios, the developers behind the Age of Wonders and the Overlord series, have recently been acquired by Paradox Interactive. In their new capacity Triumph will focus on developing games, with Paradox taking care of the publishing side of business. To clarify a few things about this acquisition, the CEOs of both companies, Fredrik Wester and Lennart Sas, have recently participated in a Q&A livestream. In short, Codemasters own the rights for the Overlord IP and so Triumph will focus on creating turn-based strategy games from now on; they’re roughly halfway done with their next project and are excited that they don’t have to self-publish it.

There’s quite a bit more there, so you might want to check out the VOD:

And here’s the official statement from Triumph Studios on this matter:

We are super excited to bring you the news that Triumph Studios has been acquired by Paradox Interactive. Our Triumph adventure began 20 years ago, taking us from the first Age of Wonders strategy game to the Action RPG series Overlord, and back to our turn-based roots again. We have created the sort of original games that we ourselves craved, and that we wanted to share with a like-minded audience. Triumph’s games are genre-defying, can be experienced with other people, appeal to the inner nerd and somehow all involve conquering the world in some fashion.

Throughout our history we have worked with varying degrees of independence, from full-on indie to close cooperation with publishers. After self-publishing Age of Wonders 3, which creatively and commercially turned out tremendously well, we realized that development – in close relation to our fans – is the thing that we care about most. Additionally, the games market is constantly evolving and we drew the conclusion that expanding our publishing efforts for the limited number of games we release would be inefficient.

So we were super excited when Paradox proposed joining their family. As one of the world’s premier publishers – and developers – of strategy games, they really understand the type of games we make. The have specialized, highly skilled personnel to complement our activities: from marketing and PR, to QA, localization and of course development itself. Many of us are huge fans of Paradox games, so we’re very much looking forward to sharing knowledge with their renowned Grand Strategy developers.

As a development studio we will keep on flying our own flag, but with the help of Paradox and the continued support of you -our fans- we’ll be able to take our games to another level, and contribute to the continued development of a strategy powerhouse. We just can’t wait to reveal to you what we’ve been cooking up over the last two years.

Thanks for all your support. A new Age of Wonders dawns today, the future for strategy games has never looked better!

Arno, Lennart and the Triumph Team