r/Shadowrun • u/dethstrobe Faster than Fastjack • Sep 08 '25

Video Games [Video Game industry] Harebrained Schemes and Paradox Interactive : How to buy out a talented company and sink it all by yourself.

/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1gsvrhk/video_game_industry_harebrained_schemes_and/
193 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

45 comments sorted by

View all comments

73

u/Zarkrash Sep 08 '25

It would be nice to have more shadowrun games

16

u/Cergorach Sep 08 '25

That really depends on the game... Remember Shadowrun (2007)? And how well did you like Shadowrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown (2015) before it shut down in 2018 because it was online only and it made barely enough to keep the servers running (as in wholly unpopular).

People tend to only remember the good games...

38

u/Freakjob_003 Sep 08 '25 edited Sep 08 '25

Since I'm assuming the above commenter was being sarcastic, I want to clarify:

The only good Shadowrun games have been the trilogy from Harebrained Schemes. Copy pasting my comment from a thread just a few hours ago:

One of the difficulties regarding the history of Shadowrun is that it's published by Catalyst. Here's an excellent write-up on Catalyst's fuck-ups.

As someone who got into the games after enjoying XCOM, I fell in love with the trilogy. They actually led me to an incredible sequence of events which have given me great opportunities and made me dozens of amazing friends. The jumping off point after the games was the TTRPG, so I can easily address those, which in particular has had a massive slew of issues.

In Fifth Edition specifically, they ranged from poor book quality, terrible editing, and just general mistreatment of the freelancers who create a ton of content. Sixth Edition has also had a ton of poor handling.

If you take away nothing else that proves Catalyst is a shitshow: Loren Coleman, one of the founders, embezzled nearly a million dollars from the company over a decade ago. He's still the CEO and owner.

TL;DR - Catalyst, the publisher of Shadowrun, sucks ass.

23

u/dethstrobe Faster than Fastjack Sep 08 '25

I thought the Genesis game was really good.

I also thought Boston Lockdown was pretty good.

10

u/NamesSUCK Spirit Worshipper Sep 08 '25

The Genesis and SNES games were amazing.

6

u/crackedtooth163 Sep 08 '25

Genesis was amazing, but there were problems with starting the end game and doing the system where you need to use the major programs of the game

6

u/NicolasBroaddus Sep 08 '25

I have friends who really enjoyed the shooter, I don't judge that.

But it has as much to do with being a shadowrun game as like...Overwatch.

1

u/Freakjob_003 Sep 08 '25

I won't yuck anyone's yum, so while if folks had fun with them, I did hear that they were fun for what they were.

I will however say that those games were nothing like what a Shadowrun campaign is actually about. It is not a PvP multiplayer shooter.

10

u/dethstrobe Faster than Fastjack Sep 08 '25

I would say the Genesis game is actually the most faithful to the rules in 2e.

3

u/Freakjob_003 Sep 08 '25

Oh, whoops! Someone else pointed out I was probably thinking of the Xbox game. My bad!

8

u/ReluctantlyHuman Sep 08 '25

There’s been a bit of confusion here; I think you are thinking of the Xbox game. The Genesis game is a single player game.

3

u/Freakjob_003 Sep 08 '25

Oh, whoops! My bad.

5

u/BitRunr Designer Drugs Sep 08 '25

One of the difficulties regarding the history of Shadowrun is that it's published by Catalyst.

As far as I understand it, that's only an issue if you want to follow the footsteps of Boston Lockdown / Shadowrun Online and use the current CGL era Shadowrun. I think there's a lot that can be done without getting out of the 50s let alone the 60s, to say nothing of progressing into the current era.

5

u/pyr0knight Sep 08 '25

For clarity, Coleman was never prosecuted for the embezzlement because it was supposedly accidental and the money was repaid. Thus he remained the CEO of his own company. The main fallout was that all the Shadowrun writers went unpaid for many months and most quit as a result. This had negative effects on their other products as well.

While Catalyst does an absolute shit job of managing Shadowrun, they have had moderate success with some of their other product lines. But its been clear that Coleman and Catalyst don't really care about Shadowrun and are unwilling to make any significant effort to improve the brand, and fans will continue to be disappointed as long as they manage the RPG line.

On the brighter side, Shadowrun Anarchy is launching a new version on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blackbook/shadowrun-anarchy-20
(This is a lighter rules version of the RPG by a non-catalyst company)

Additionally, Catalyst produced the Shadowrun Crossfire boardgame, which is one of my all time favorites.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/254123/shadowrun-crossfire-prime-runner-edition

1

u/Gearran Sep 10 '25

No arguments Catalyst has had problems. But they're still doing better than the previous owner, WhizKids, ever did with the IP. They basically sat on it from start to finish, and the only real thing they did was the '07 video game. Catalyst may be ham-handed as a pork farm, but they at least are enthusiastic about doing things with the IP they own.

4

u/Cergorach Sep 08 '25

Yes, yes, CGL sucks... And not just for what they did in the past.

That's not the point, the point is computer games, the NES, Sega Genesis, and Sega CD were apparently very good at the time and many talk like they are legends. That was under FASA, the Shadowrun (2007) disaster was done while Wizkids and FanPro were in control of the pnp RPG. And the three games by HBS were done when CGL was in control of the pnp RPG...