Publisher Faces Gamer Backlash Over Buggy Game Release

Following several setbacks such as the cancellation of Life By You and the problematic launch of Cities: Skyline 2, Paradox Interactive has explained how it intends to proceed with the insights they've gained about players

Paradox Interactive Explains Recent Games' Cancellation and DelayPlayers Have Expectations, and Some Technical Issues are Hard to Fix

Mattias Lilja, CEO of Cities: Skylines 2 publisher Paradox Interactive, along with Chief Communications Officer Henrik Fahraeus, has commented on players' attitudes toward game launches. Speaking to Rock Paper Shotgun during the company's recent Media Day, Lilja said that players have "higher expectations" and are "less trusting" that game developers will resolve issues post-release.

Learning from their experience with last year's problematic release of Cities: Skylines 2, the publisher has stated that it is being more thorough with addressing problems found in their games. The publisher also believes that players need earlier access to the game to gather feedback to improve development. "If we could have allowed players to try it on a larger scale, that would have helped," Fahraeus said about Cities: Skylines 2, adding that they aim to have "a greater degree of transparency with players," before launching a game.

In line with this, Paradox decided to indefinitely postpone its jail management simulator, Prison Architect 2. "We're pretty confident that the gameplay [of Prison Architect 2] is good," Lilja said. "But we had quality problems, which means to give the players the game they deserve, we decided to postpone it." And with the recent cancellation of their life sim game, Life By You, due to unmet demands, Lilja additionally clarified that the indefinite postponement is because they just haven't been "able to maintain the pace" they wanted.

“So it's not the same kind of set of challenges that we had with Life By You, which led to cancellation," he explained. "It's more that we haven't been able to maintain the pace that we wanted," adding that they've found some problems "harder to resolve than we thought" when Paradox does "peer reviews of the game and user testing and whatnot."

In Prison Architect 2's case, the problem is "mostly certain technical problems rather than design," Lilja said. "It's more how can we make this technically high-quality enough for a stable release." He added, "It's also based on the fact that we, in all transparency, see that fans right now, with a constrained budget for games, have higher expectations, and are less accepting that you will fix things over time."

According to the CEO, with the gaming space being a "winner-takes-all market," players are likely to abandon "most games" quite rapidly. He added, "and this is even more evident now, [during] perhaps the last two years. That's at least what we observe from our games, and also from others in the industry."

Cities: Skylines 2 launched last year with significant problems that prompted such intense fan backlash that the publisher and developer Colossal Order issued a joint apology, subsequently suggesting a "fan feedback summit." The game's first paid DLC was also postponed due to major performance issues at launch. Meanwhile, Life By You was canceled earlier this year, as they ultimately determined that further development would not meet the standards of Paradox and its player base. However, Lilja later clarified that some of the encountered problems were issues they "had not fully grasped," so "that's entirely our fault," he added.