Cities: Skylines 2 launched too early, admits Paradox deputy CEO
After fans criticised the game for being overrun with glitches and having lacklustre performance, Paradox Interactive deputy CEO Mattias Lilja has now conceded the publisher released 'Cities: Skylines 2' too early.
Paradox Interactive deputy boss Mattias Lilja has admitted ‘Cities: Skylines 2’ released too early.
The city-building game - which was developed by Colossal Order - faced fierce criticism for being unfinished and filled with bugs when it launched last year, and now the publisher’s deputy CEO has conceded the title needed longer in the oven before it hit consoles and PC.
He told PC Gamer: “I think the lesson learned is that we should probably not launch that early.”
Lilja added Paradox and Colossal were “very in agreement that it was time to release it” in October 2023, though conceded the developer and publisher knew “that the system requirements [for the game to run smoothly] were going to be pretty high”.
Despite the rocky launch, the Paradox higher-up emphasised he was satisfied with how the studio took fan feedback into account when updating the game, much like 2022 strategy title ‘Victoria 3’, which was also panned for releasing in a glitchy state.
He said: “There were parts of the ‘Cities 2’ launch that I am not proud of.
“I am happy with how we responded to the feedback from the fans, just like we did with ‘Victoria 3’. We didn't exactly hit what we wanted, but we're working with the fans to remedy that over time.”
‘Cities 2’ is currently moving in the right direction after The Economy 2.0 patch substantially improved the performance of the game, while Colossal continues working on implementing modding tools.
Even so, Lilja insisted ‘Cities 2’ “also needs a really solid base game because modding is going to slow down performance quite a lot, as it always does”.
