Paradox Tinto is the Barcelona, Spain development studio that Paradox Interactive announced on June 1, 2020, a move by the Swedish, Stockholm-based publisher that put the Europa Universalis series in the hands of the person who created it. The studio is led by Johan Andersson, a 25-plus-year veteran of Paradox Development Studio, the publisher's core Stockholm team, and the original creator of the Europa Universalis franchise. Its first assignment was to take over the ongoing development of Europa Universalis IV, the August 2013 release that has stayed in active development well past its tenth anniversary in 2023, with a mandate to then create new grand strategy games. Andersson put the goal plainly: "My goal is to assemble a team and create a fully functional studio to keep on developing the Europa Universalis brand." The founding came amid broad expansion at Paradox, which planned to recruit roughly 200 people across all seven of its studios during 2020, with around 70 positions open at the time.
Paradox Tinto now sits alongside Paradox Development Studio, Triumph Studios, Iceflake Studios, Haemimont Games and Playrion Gamestudio as one of Paradox Interactive's internal development studios, and its stewardship of the series is a matter of record: Steam credits Europa Universalis IV to both Paradox Development Studio and Paradox Tinto, and the game's store description opens with "Developed by Paradox Tinto." The mandate to build something new produced Europa Universalis V, developed by Paradox Tinto with Andersson as game director and published by Paradox Interactive on November 4, 2025. For players of the series, that continuity is the point. Europa Universalis has always asked the same thing of its players - take a historical nation through several centuries, balancing trade, diplomacy, religion and war - and the studio guiding it is built around the designer who set those terms in the first place, with a catalog that now spans the long-running fourth game and its successor.
