HBR will now function as an internal studio and division under the Paradox organization. It will be led by its own internal management and creative teams, and continue to design and develop more games like the recently released BattleTech computer game (see “'Battletech' Returns”). According to the announcement, Paradox will “…acquire 100% of the shares in Harebrained Holdings Inc, sole owner of Harebrained Schemes, LLC, from Harebrained Bag of Holding Inc. Paradox pays a fixed purchase price of US$7.5 million at the time of acquisition plus an additional purchase price corresponding to 25% of the acquired business’ earnings before publishing costs over the next 5 years to the extent such earnings exceed the fixed purchase price.”
Weisman is an acclaimed designer in both the video game and tabletop game space, known for founding FASA Corp, 42 Entertainment, and WizKids. He is the creator of Shadowrun, Crimson Skies, and BattleTech/MechWarrior. One of HBR’s first products was a hybrid tabletop / online miniatures game called Golem Arcana (see “Jordan Weisman on 'Golem Arcana'”).
“Mitch and I started Harebrained to create the kind of story-rich tactical games we loved,” said Jordan Weisman, CEO of Harebrained Schemes, “and for the last seven years, our studio has been fueled by our team’s passion and by the generous support of our fans. As the scale of our games has grown and the marketplace has gotten extremely noisy we felt that HBS needed to team up with a company that could provide us the financial stability and marketing expertise that would allow us focus on what we love doing - making great games and stories.”
Paradox Interactive recently announced partnerships with several prominent board game companies to create licensed tabletop versions of its popular properties (see “Paradox Interactive Unplugs”). Paradox acquired (in 2015) and is now a sister company of White Wolf Entertainment, which is about to release new tabletop versions of Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf (see "New Versions of 'Vampire' and 'Werewolf' RPGs").