Colossal Order was founded in the summer of 2009 by a group of game developers of the mobile game company Universomo. Mariina Hallikainen was hired from outside of Universomo as the CEO of the new company. At first, Colossal Order had difficulties obtaining funding for its first game, the business simulation game Cities in Motion, that was already in development when the company was founded. Investors thought that Cities in Motion would not attract a large enough clientele. Instead of big investors, the first steps of the company were funded by Finnish public instruments – Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment, Tekes, and DigiDemo finance of the Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture – as well as small private investors. In its early phase, the company was coached by the Yritystalli program of the Tampere University of Technology, but advice was sought directly from experienced Finnish game development companies as well, specifically Remedy Entertainment and Frozenbyte. Upon being founded, Colossal Order compared dozens of publishers and ended up signing a publishing agreement with Paradox Interactive after over a year's worth of negotiations. In October 2015, Colossal Order was awarded the Finnish Game Developer of the Year award at the convention. The judges thanked Colossal Order for focusing: "from its inception... on – in addition to developing games – also developing its business model".
Games
The relationship between Colossal Order and its publisher Paradox Interactive has been characterized as constructive. Colossal Order has the freedom to create games without limitations set by the publisher, bar those on schedules. Unlike the game developers that founded it, Colossal Order does not develop mobile games. Instead, the company focuses on PC games. Employees of the company have their own internal wiki platform for developing games. Games by Colossal Order are known for their active modding communities. One of the programmers at the company works full-time on modding tools. The best-known game of the company is the city-building game published in March 2015. It competes with games of the SimCity and Cities XL series. Cities: Skylines got its first expansion pack, Cities: Skylines – After Dark, in September 2015. Its second expansion pack came out in February 2016, called Cities Skylines - Snowfall. A third expansion pack, Cities: Skylines - Natural Disasters, was released in November 2016, the fourth expansion pack, Mass Transit, in May 2017. The fifth expansion, Green Cities, came out in October 2017, and the sixth expansion, Parklife was released in May 2018. The seventh expansion, Industries, was released in October 2018, and the eighth expansion, Campus, was released in May 2019. The ninth and most recent expansion, Sunset Harbor, was released in March 2020.
