Life By You, the forthcoming
The Sims competitor, has been
cancelled. The 24 people studio Paradox Tectonic that was in charge of it has been
closed down.
They said "
A version that we’d be satisfied with is too far away ", which reminds me of the time they cancelled
Runemaster which was cancelled because they couldn't make it fun, after having spent a lot of time developing it.
Since I used to be something of a Paradox fanboy I want to tell a bit more about the studio in regards to recent releases: they are both a developer and a publisher and have published titles such as
Cities Skylines and
Pillars of Eternity. One of the titles they published in the past was
Magicka from Arrowhead, a co-op game with a humorous tone. They apparently owned the licence, since
Magicka 2 was developed by Pieces Interactive. I don't know how well the two Magicka titles sold, but if the amount of reviews on Steam is any indication the
Magicka 2 sales were probably significantly lower. Meanwhile, Arrowhead went on and developed other games, most significantly
Helldivers 2, which has turned into one of the surprise hits of this year.
In other news, Pieces Interactive
closed down yesterday. And one of the previous big names at Paradox, Shams Jorjani,
joined Arrowhead as CEO about a month ago.
It looks to me like Paradox is going through a rough patch, releases being cancelled and talented employees leaving for greener pastures.