Regulars may already know that Mariina Hallikainen, general director of the Colossal Order studio, has been carrying out a communication exercise every week since the game's release to take stock of the various projects underway at the developers of the construction game. city. And suffice to say that there are many of them, Cities Skylines 2 has been mired in a difficult situation since its launch last October on PC. Already very poorly optimized and poor in content (a common curse for the sequel to a game which has had time to improve over the years), Cities Skylines 2 overcame the most patient members of the community by proudly releasing a first paid additional content instead of starting by improving a base game that looks like (very) early access. And as the DLC in question turned out to be particularly dismal (yes even for Paradox) by charging 10 euros for an asset pack of a few dozen cosmetic items and seaside accommodation, Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive managed to make it worse their case spectacularly.
Advertisement
When Cities Skylines 2 plays the crooked developer
To the point that Mariina Hallikainen's traditional weekly report gives way this week to a press release co-signed with Mattias Lilja, deputy general director of Paradox Interactive who immediately gets into the swing of things, having taken up his position on April 10. In this press release, which finally seems to take the situation in which the game finds itself more seriously, the managers admit to having “ Hastily released DLC that should not have been released in its current form. »
“ We are sincerely sorry for all of this. When we made statements like this before, we committed to continuing to make improvements, and while we are working on these updates, they have not come at an acceptable speed or scale, and we We suffer from having lost the trust of many of you. We want to do better. »
And just to walk the talk, Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive will compensate those who purchased the incriminated DLC, which is also no longer on sale and will ultimately take the form of a free addition. Too bad, however, for owners of the Ultimate Edition who will not be able to obtain a direct refund. “ Indeed, the distribution of the Ultimate Edition in digital and physical stores considerably complicates the execution of a partial refund “, we can read. As compensation, owners of the Ultimate Edition will be compensated in the form of content (3 creator packs and 3 radio stations which, together, represent a symbolic value of 40 dollars).
DLC will wait, consoles too
Beyond this gesture of good faith, Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive will try to change their approach both in terms of development and communication. “ Firstly, this means that we will focus on improving the base game and modeling tools, and secondly, we want to better involve you, the community, in choosing our priorities for the future . We will focus on free patches and updates to the game in the coming months before Colossal Order dedicates time to new paid content, which will cause the Bridges and Ports expansion to be delayed until 2025. »
Advertisement
The developers have also assembled a group of player ambassadors who will participate in an advisory meeting and discuss the annual roadmap with the team. After a promising start marked by a peak of 104,697 simultaneous visits, Cities Skylines 2 was quickly released by the community and has a peak of 6,256 players over the last 24 hours. It's half as much as the first Cities Skylines released in March 2015. In this delicate climate, needless to say that the release of console ports, initially expected last year then in spring 2024, has been postponed until much later, which is undoubtedly better for everyone. “ It's important to note that the team working on the console version is separate from the PC development team and will therefore progress without us having to share our attention or time. »
- Also read | Paradox Interactive: record turnover but falling profit for 2023