Stellaris smashes Paradox day one sales records

Going sci fi has only added to the appeal of Paradox's grand strategy leanings, apparently.

Stellaris smashes Paradox day one sales records

Stellaris is something of a departure for Paradox Interactive. Although it boasts a broad catalogue, the developer and publisher is best known for its historical grand strategy titles, such as Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis.

In Stellaris, players design an alien species and set out to explore and possibly conquer a procedurally-generated universe chock-a-block with randomised AI. Bit of a change, then - but the decision to pursue science fiction has really paid off.

The May 9 release chalked up 200,000 sales in its first 24 hours, "breaking the revenue record for any of Paradox Interactive’s previous titles during the same time period".

"For the internal development studio, the game has broken every record available and is the studio's fastest selling game ever," Paradox said.

Stellaris has also smashed at least one of Paradox's records as a publisher. 68,000 players checked in concurrently on launch day, beating previous record holder Cities: Skylines.

There seems to be no end to appetite for freeform space games at the moment, what with Star Citizen, Elite: Dangerous and No Man's Sky in the mix. This preference doesn't seem to extend to shooters though, huh.

Paradox is in an interesting position at the moment, having made an IPO after 17 years of independence. It also recently acquired the White Wolf brand from CCP and has expanded its publishing efforts with Fat Shark's War of the Vikings, Colossal Order's Cities Skylines, and Obisidian's Pillars of Eternity and Tyrannis.