This admission follows a survey that revealed a culture of mistreatment and silence at Paradox. But this culture is changing at an alarmingly slow pace.

 

More and more companies are managing to put the media spotlight on the working environment in which they live every day through the courage of their employees. A few days ago, a survey carried out in the offices of Paradox Interactive, a company that makes games such as Crusader Kings, revealed a culture of mistreatment and silence towards employees. In response, Paradox issued an official statement assuring employees and journalists that they would address the issue in their way.

In the aftermath of the events, the company’s CEO Fredrik Wester admitted via his Twitter account that an incident occurred in 2018 for which he was primarily responsible. As he writes in the post, it “led to rumours and discussions about my role in this environment”. The chairman admitted that at a conference organised by Paradox in 2018, he misbehaved towards a female employee, making the employee feel uncomfortable. And while he apologised to the employee and his human resources representative, he understands that “in the interest of transparency and clarity”, the matter needs to be brought to light.

 

 

He repeatedly reiterated that he regretted what had happened and that he was “working with his coach and mentor to understand his behaviour’s impact and improve himself”. “I will continue to work to not only improve myself but also to improve the working environment at Paradox and the industry as a whole”.

However, the survey on the working environment at Paradox is why the ambiguous event came to light, despite the desire for transparency. With this in mind, Wester admits that “it makes my purposeless credible when it comes to dealing with such matters internally and therefore I will not be directly involved, this will be done by HR and Paradox with external assistance but with my full support if necessary”.

Paradox’s CEO also clarifies via the thread that this event had nothing to do with his resignation in 2018 from the position he returned to after the previous chairman’s departure due to differences in the company’s vision. On the other hand, the management has forgotten all promises made by Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard to improve the working environment, as no changes have been made since the denunciations of discriminatory working environments at both companies.

Source: Twitter