So many times we’ve seen a developer and/or publisher release a game in a lousy state or with ridiculous monetization, then the apology image or message (apology.jpg) comes along, and now they’ve really gone ridiculously overboard with the sequel to Cities: Skylines.

The first post-launch DLC for Cities: Skylines 2, Beach Properties, was an outrage. It cost $10 and only 4% of the 1367 reviews were positive! The only real beach content is the four trees. This is not a stupid joke, there are actually four trees in the DLC. The response was rightly negative, and as a result Mariina Hallikainen (CEO of Colossal Order) and Mattias Lilja (Deputy CEO of Paradox) had to issue a joint statement apologizing to the public.

Most players will get their money back and the DLC will be free. Those who bought the Cities: Skylines 2 Ultimate Edition will not receive a refund due to the complexity of the partial refund process. Instead, they’ll receive three Creator Packs and three Radio Stations worth a total of $40, which will be completed sometime before the end of the year. In addition, they are making immediate, significant changes to game development and communication. They are focusing on the core game and modding tools, and they are trying to involve the community, so there will be a meeting with player representatives. They will be selected based on the number of followers they have, and they think that will represent the most players. The goal is to have transparency and not make the same mistakes they have made in the past.

In January, Hallikainen warned that toxic player behavior could cause developers to pull out, and it seems his caution was justified. The Bridges and Ports add-on for the game will not be released until 2025 instead of this year, and the console port of Cities: Skylines 2 has also been delayed, but here the decision was made for optimization reasons and they hope to have it ready by October. According to Hallikainen and Lilja, the console team is different from the PC team, so the console issues won’t affect the PC plans.

Both Steam and Reddit users are angry about the state of the game so far, but rightly so because of the mentality of Colossal Order and Paradox so far. In October, a day after the game’s release, the developers said that the performance issues were not in the game’s foundation, and that paid DLC would not be released until the poor performance was fixed. Patches have fixed it, but the game still runs poorly and the DLC promise has not been kept.

The concurrent player record for Cities: Skylines 2 was 104,000, twice as many as in the first game. Today it is around 6,000. It will be hard to make a miraculous turnover from this point.

Source: PCGamer, Steam, Paradox,