Another Game Ruined By Paradox’s Touch

What the hell is going on at Paradox? Today we dive into what's known about the cancellation of Life By You, a game 5 years and $20m deep into development.

Sources:

[penzorphallos]

I've said it before (it got me banned from their forums) and I'll say it again: Paradox as a Dev team is a (mostly) great company, but as a publisher they are a trash fire.

[muja_bunny]

Management saying "it was our fault" isn't taking accountability if they still have a job and the team working on the game doesn't

[Vidfavne]

"Moving forward". That's what our CTO said at least 25 times in the latest company bad news-meeting, after yet another team was let go. Moving forward is apparently moving backwards in corporate.

[mistertitus]

I was looking forward to this too... EA Sims was great with 3, 4 was just irritating. A new player is needed in this genre!

[TomPokys]

I've been saying this for months now: There must have been some overly enthusiastic corpo in charge of Paradox publishing division who lied, overpromised, and oversold their job to his bosses at Paradox proper. If you don't count the DLC and monetization model, which has been problem for years, everything bad that happened to Paradox within the last year was with their non-internal games.

[alexixeno]

I saw an article where one of the devs said they felt like the rug was pulled out from under them because they were meeting all the goals set for them. Just to prove more that management mismanaged and the Devs are the one who suffer for it

[KittyBGaming]

The fact that the sims 3 can do what’s promised here (and more) and Life by you couldn’t do it… it’s saddening. It’s disappointing. I hope for Paralives now. The last hope for competition.

[mkusanagi]

What a shame, this genre needs another game that's not the Sims. If they released a good Sims equivalent of CS1, they could've made money hand over fist

[VlaunBurtlecraft]

This one saddened me a bit. While Life by You looked quite raw, I was hoping it would get some time to get polished or even have its development restarted, instead of outright getting canceled. One of the key figures in the project, Rod Humble, is a known figure in the Sims history - quite a big name actually since he was the head of the Sims Studio during Sims 2 and early Sims 3. The only name that would have probably topped Rod was if Will Wright himself was involved. There are still other options still coming for the Life Simulation genre, but the pot is looking slimmer now.

[stillshallow]

When I saw the trailers for LBY I started reaching for my purse - then I saw the Paradox logo and thought "no, I'll wait for Paralives" - the CS2 mishandling has obliterated my trust.

[draigaur]

i guess they thought their reputation couldn't afford another baseball bat to the face

[atomixfang]

Its a shame what Paradox has turned into, from a strategy games darling to a souless publisher corporation.

[agodelianshock]

Devs losing their jobs because of mismanagement is absolutely bad. That said, many developers lose their jobs anytime a project ends period successful or not. I've had 3 jobs since January alone, working on some of the biggest IP coming up. When that contract ends, it ends.

[austindam]

As someone who followed this game's development from when it was first announced, this cancellation did not surprise me at all. Over the past year, each time they revealed more about the game I grew less confident that it would be a success. The art direction was poor and it didn't seem like the team was in agreement about what the focus of the game should be.

Given its recent struggles as a publisher, I believe Paradox has realized it cannot afford half measures. The reputational hit of another poor release is not something it can absorb. As such, it needed to either delay the game significantly or cancel it altogether. Putting out something unfinished that would be "fixed" later is no longer an option (see: Cities Skylines 2).

I get why those who were excited for this game are frustrated and angry. But, the fact is that the developer is at least equally to blame here. The game had already been delayed multiple times, and from my perspective the improvements after each of those delays were minimal. Just with the information I was able to glean I could see that the project was having significant issues and was not progressing.

[TitusFlavius]

Shame. That game looked like it had potential.

[charge]

Its interesting how theyre willing to ship an unfinished, subpar game like cities 2, an ip with established brand value, but theyre not willing to do the same for a new project and concept. My guess is sunk cost; competing with ea and sims using a brand new ip probably didnt sound as safe and secure an investment with returns that meet their ideals. Applying "live service" updates to new ip probably doesnt sound optimal to them, especially with the legacy of cities 2 looming. Hard to present something unfinished without a market identity, then monetizing it.

It also sounds like another case of management/executives with little or no hands-on experience with the frontline development process, skills, and requirements

[DivinityOfBLaze]

Life by You looked jank. But as a long time sims player. It looked like THE dream game. The only lacking aspect was the art style but man absolutely everything looked PERFECT about it. Why shut the studio down? Let them cook. Maybe have them redo the style entirely while keeping the amazing systems. This could have been another Cities Skylines 1 for them. But NO. They just found new ways to disappoint.

[Snolder]

Surely the dev team has to take responsibility too. A big chunk of the money that was burned on this project went to dev salaries. That they are not able to build a convincing tech demo with that amount of time and money speaks as much to their greed and arrogance as to the management's. They were likely being paid handsomely exactly because they shouldn't need the handholding.

[PaaLenTier]

cities skylines 2 had no right to be bad after the first killed sim city

[elFulberto]

Tbh the game didn't look like it was anywhere near ready. It looked like shit with disproportionate character models, janky animations, and eye-melting colors and the devs seemed to be more eager to showcase the game's moddability than explain the gameplay and how it would differentiate the game from the Sims.

I feel bad for the devs but I cannot say the cancelation was at all unexpected. It felt like the development had made a wrong turn at some point.