Stellaris is marking a change of command. The space-faring grand strategy game’s former director, Daniel Moregård, has announced he is moving onto a new role, with senior game designer Stephen Muray assuming the title of game director. Moregård announced the changeover in the latest Stellaris dev diary this week.
“I am extremely proud and happy with what we’ve accomplished, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what Stephen and the team can achieve together,” Moregård writes. “The game is possibly in a better state than it has ever been, and with the Custodian Initiative going strong I feel like now is the best time to step down and let someone else take the reins.”
Moregård, who began working on Stellaris in 2013 as Paradox’s only UI/UX designer, says he’s remaining with Paradox Development Studios, and is currently leading an unannounced project at the company. Muray noted the promotion with a tweet that reads, “ATTENTION ALL PLANETS OF THE SOLAR FEDERATION: WE HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL.” He’s been working on Stellaris since April 2019, following a 14-year tour at WB Games Boston, the studio formerly known as Turbine.
Moregård says his proudest achievement as Stellaris’ game director was the launch of the custodians initiative, a dedicated sub-team that keeps Stellaris supplied with a steady stream of core updates and free patches.
“The idea is that the Custodian team is a clear reinvestment into improving the game and the game experience,” Moregård writes. “My hope was that better base quality for the game will lead to a higher amount of satisfaction and a higher number of monthly active users. My take is that happy players want to buy DLC, and since we also want to make the game we’re passionate about as good as possible, everyone wins.”
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Moregård says the game is in good hands: he credits the recent launch of the Libra 3.3 update and unity rework to Muray and the rest of the team, writing that “my involvement was no more than setting the initial path towards the Unity rework.”