they release old school pc games. games which could have appear 10-15 years ago on pc. with shittier graphics and less options but same gameplay.

those games are niche.

I must be the only person in the world who couldn't get into "Mount and Blade"...Sorry. :/

Some of their stuff is as you say, some not so much: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Paradox_Interactive_games

They're responsible for a lot of games (best one you've never played: Airfix Dogfighter).

The games Paradox make are niche (though Hearts of Iron seems pretty well known due to WW2 games being popular, shame they kind of ruined it with how buggy HoI 3 was initially).

The games they publish, not so much. None of them are of the caliber of AAA games made by the big publishers of course, but Magicka, Cities in Motion or King Arthur are not niche.

Mount&Blade was supposed to be niche (bought it when it was still a Turkish indie game in beta), but it ended up being popular.

The difference between what's niche and what's not is pretty thin imo. Just look at Minecraft. It could easily have been defined as niche had it not been such a success.

Yeah, I constantly play their games and enjoying Darkest Hour which is way better than HoI3 with the World War I scenario. They are not as niche as say other wargame developers like those from Matrix Games who do sell good games like Forge of Freedom but their prices are completely and utterly static. It's probably the only reason why I buy from gamersgate from time to time.

They have yet to top their classic Victoria: Revolutions though.

Try out some of the stuff they have published before you judge. Mount & Blade Warband + Magicka are pretty cool games.

And this looks so good - http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-PBC/pirates-of-black-cove


Yes, i like pirates.

Looks nice, keeping my eye on this.

there's demo avaible on fileplanet. I've played it, nice and funny game :)

so vicky 2 is worse?

It still has more issues because it lacks the patches and expansion that the original got.
After it gets those Vicky 2 will probably be a better game than Vicky.

Vicky 2 new patch is in beta stage, and expansion is on the way ;)

For me they didn't ruin HoI. Bought HoI3 later and never had a real bug, maybe some mistranslated texts. I am looking forward to HoI4. Hopefully they do not increase complexity further, but concentrate on usability and fun and AI.

They didn't ruin HoI for me either, I enjoy it a lot now that most of the bugs and such have been patched out and the upcoming second expansion will probably make the game even better.

But I know a few people who bought HoI 3 at release because they thought a WW2 wargame sounded fun, were annoyed (rightly) by the huge issues the game had back then and promptly vowed never to buy a Paradox game again.
Hell, if I hadn't enjoyed the rest of the Paradox games so much I'd have been in the same boat.

I think they've learned their lesson then, though. The Vicky 2 release was much smoother (not without issues, but then no game as huge and complex can be at release).
They've also learned that trying to do too much all at once, as they did with HoI 3, is a bad idea because you can't polish anything then.