Paradox Interactive, the company behind Cities: Skylines And Crusader kings, announced that after numerous delays, it had decided to resume the development of Living with youthe eagerly awaited Sims-like game.
Originally announced in March 2023, Living with you looked like a promising new take on the life management genre, which was mainly developed by EA’s long-standing Sims Franchise. While the first trailer for Living with you looked very much like The SimsParadox Interactive promised that its version of the genre would offer even more customization options. Players could not only change their clothes, appearance and houses, but also customize and control conversations and even career paths. Paradox Interactive also promised that Living with you would also be very modifiable. However, players have no way to modify or play the life simulation.
On the 17th of JuneParadox Interactive announced that Living with you was officially cancelled. In a statement on the official Paradox forumsThe company’s deputy CEO, Mattias Lilja, confirmed the news.
“This was an incredibly difficult decision and represents a clear failure by Paradox to meet both our own and the community’s expectations,” said Lilja. The deputy CEO continued:
Life through you has been in the works for a long time and we are very excited about the promise and potential of this game. We always hoped it could make a mark in what is, for us, an exciting and new genre, so we decided to delay it twice to give the studio and the game a fair chance to realize the potential we saw. With each delay, we saw incremental improvements, which in hindsight may have caused us to focus on details rather than the bigger picture.
As mentioned in the post, on May 20, Living with you has been postponed just two weeks before the planned Early Access launch. No new release date was announced at the time. Now we know that, according to the deputy CEO, after another release delay and a “more comprehensive look at the game,” it became clear that the studio still had a long way to go.
“If we get to a point where we believe that more time will not bring us any closer to a version that we are happy with, then we think it is better to stop,” said Lilja. “This is of course hard and disappointing for everyone who has put their time and enthusiasm into this project, especially when our decision comes so late in the process.”
When asked what Paradox will do differently in the future to avoid such delays and last-minute cancellations, Lilja answered honestly and transparently: There is no guarantee that this will not happen again, but the studio will still try to avoid this outcome in the future.
“It’s difficult to get games right,” Lilja said. “And we’re definitely going to make mistakes, which, as always, are painfully obvious in hindsight, but still shouldn’t be this big. We need to take a hard look at what got us here and see what changes we need to make to get better. Ultimately, our mission remains the same and we’ll continue to take whatever steps are necessary to do just that.”
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