Johan Andersson, studio manager at Paradox Tinto, apologized for a series of "low-quality" releases of Europa Universalis 4. But this is not a one-off, and the EU4 game director feels that "Leviathan" is just the cap of a "long trail of low-quality releases" that, in his eyes, began with 2018's "Golden Century."

"As studio manager and game director, I must apologize because, ultimately, this is my fault," Anderson wrote. 'This is entirely my fault.'

This is in response to the overwhelmingly negative response to "Leviathan," thanks in part to a horde of bugs, crashes, and seemingly unfinished mechanics. This may be due in part to the fact that "Leviathan" is the first film developed at Paradox's new Tinto studio, led by Andersson, and is composed largely of new hires.

"We should have delayed the start of development of "Leviathan" until all the necessary resources were in place and they could properly participate in the project. We should have announced a halt to the development of EU4 after the release of Emperor until we had a team in place to begin design and work early in 2021. We are changing some of our plans for the remainder of the year. We had originally planned to fix all legacy bugs before suspending development of further enhancements to EU4. Now we are accelerating these plans and also making sure that the community gets them frequently."

EU4 is not the only one in the doldrums for Paradox. According to the publisher's latest financial report, profits for the quarter were down 9% and dropped to 44% compared to last year (via GamesIndustry) CEO Ebba Ljungerud said the publisher is "not happy" with the results and said that PC games cited the lack of full-price expansions as the reason.

"Sometimes there are periods when there are fewer or no games or expansions released. But we can do better than this and our ambitions are higher."