Paradox Interactive Launches "Pirate Bay" Campaign

Paradox Interactive and Nitro Games today announced the launch of the official pre-order pack for upcoming real-time strategy game East India Company. The "Pirate Bay" bonus campaign will be included in all pre-orders via GamersGate, Steam, Impulse and Direct2Drive.

The "Pirate Bay" campaign starts in 1650 and gives players control over a frigate and level 2 pirate captain (commander) with the skills "Feared" and "Rout." At the start of the game, the player fleet is located in the pirate port in northern Madagascar.

"The Pirate Bay Campaign will allow gamers to play for a faction used to looting what others have worked hard for, rather than creating anything of value themselves," explains Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive. "It will be an interesting challenge for gamers to put themselves in the shoes of these mischievous wrong-doers rather than the heralded heroes."

"East India Company did not originally have pirates as a playable faction as we wanted to concentrate on the actual companies. However, we received an incredible amount of feedback from people who told us how much they would love to play as pirates. It became clear that the best way to implement pirates as a playable faction was to make a separate campaign for them. The best part about the campaign is that you can actually compete against other players and find out who's the best pirate by uploading your points to the EIC homepage afterwards," said Kim Soares, lead designer of Nitro Games.

East India Company is scheduled to be in stores on July 31, 2009 with a SRP of $39.99 / €39.99 / £34.99. Read more about the game at http://www.eic-game.com.