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.
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Sources:
news.cision.co...
forum.paradoxp...
www.marketscre...
• Life by You | Announce...
www.mobygames....
www.pcgamer.co...
www.ea.com/gam...
playinzoi.com/en

[@BellularNews]

Join us at bellular.games for early access content, 20 editions of 'Loading Screen' a month and to support our team!

[@Jan12700]

Can you please just god damn balance your ducking Audio Levels???

[@penzorphallos3199]

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.

[@TheRealXartaX]

Haven't managed to get banned from the forum, but I did get shadowbanned from their KZbin channel for criticizing them (in a way that isn't really any more harsh than this video). There's a reason their vids have very few comments.

[@ShiftyMoravian]

​@@TheRealXartaXthat's weird bro, can a channel shadow ban people? I thought moderation is only done through KZbin...

[@TheRealXartaX]

@@ShiftyMoravian Yes. A channel owner can click on people's comment (the triple dot menu) and select "hide user". An easy way to check if you're shadowbanned is to post a comment, wait 5 min, then refresh the page. Sort by newest and check if your comment is there. If it is, open the video in incognito mode (so you're not logged in), and check for your comment again. If it doesn't show up when you're not logged in, you're shadowbanned.

[@jamesclarkson156]

@@ShiftyMoravian I heard people talk about it and yeah they can. They can't do the sneaky stuff youtube can but they can curate their comments. They can also put you in an approve only state and then never do it.

[@akatsukicloak]

They ban any criticism even if it doesn't break rules, got banned on discord, paradox forums, and steam. Simply calling the company itself greedy is enough to go under 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

[@frozenlimemix]

"It's completely my fault, and to take accountability for this, I'm firing all of you... moving forward we'll do better!"

[@OhNoTheFace]

I mean they apparently failed at making it as well

[@julied7546]

I'm just waiting for Paralives and Little Sim World.

[@doop00]

Sweden in a nutshell.

[@tkg__]

To be absolutely fair: it's business. It wasn't a Paradox game. It's a Paradox published game. In the end the publisher gives money to invest, but it's the developer (a separate company!) that has to deliver. Harsh, but to some extent, true. No one forced the team to sign up with Paradox nor with a publisher in general.

[@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.

[@R3GARnator]

Corporatese is just psychopathy.

[@Toksyuryel]

Or just running in place

[@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.

[@TheStuartGibson]

A yes man/woman who flew up the ranks and then couldn't get their teams to be as quick as completing work as they were at saying yes. Typical corporate bs

[@csmead209]

Does that include not getting a sequel to Battletech?

[@nantu07]

Not just video games, mate. Thay have absolutely no fucking clue what do to with World of Darkness. They bought the games and its been a shit show ever since. They aren't even bad games, they just lack any direction whatsoever.

[@mistertitus6814]

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!

[@LemonCreature]

We've got Paralives coming at least, but I would love to see more competition. Sims needs to get a very rude wake up call given how garbage it's become. Shame Paradox's attempt is going in the bin, I often like what they put out with their Grand Strategy Games and City Skylines 1 for the most part, despite how much the DLC adds up over time. I'm keeping expectations lower for Paralives, but I am still looking forward to seeing how it turns out nonetheless.

[@dkml1218]

inZOI is likely coming soon.

[@Deliveredmean42]

I guess Paralives, Tiny Lives, inZOI or Vivaland will do.

[@joshallen128]

if you want to do the sims online there is freeso idk if it works on debian or macos

[@julied7546]

just wait Paralives and Little Sim World.

[@alexixeno4223]

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

[@DuoMaxwellDS]

I don't believe that, considering they have delayed the game at least 3 times. People forget that most of the time when publisher pulling the rug, it's because the dev didn't meet the goal in the timely manner.

[@alexixeno4223]

@@DuoMaxwellDS i think as this video talks about, management realized they were setting bad goals and the actually project they wanted was much farther away then they though but instead of setting better goals, they decided to can the project all together.

[@Turamwdd]

@@alexixeno4223 That doesn't make sense though. The end goal was to produce a game in X number of years. When that has to be pushed three times, that means that the goals were not being met to begin with.

[@NotLikeUs17]

@@TuramwddI think the first time it was delayed was because it didn’t get enough preorders.

[@lonewolf646]

@@NotLikeUs17 the game was never up for preorder though?

[@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

[@Deliveredmean42]

Yeah, so guess Paralives, Tiny Lives, inZOI or Vivaland will do.

[@Flupperz]

@@Deliveredmean42 Thank you for this! I didn't realize there were so many other games in development until reading the comments on one of the news posts and now it makes me realize there were other better alternative, or what looks to be better in the works by other teams.

[@kukuhimanputraraharja8084]

@@Deliveredmean42 i didn't know about vivaland, thx for that info. while i still love both the sims 4+3 because of the mods that allow me to create my favorite fictional characters and have them enjoy their own adventures, i wouldn't mind some good competitions from new challenger studios (hopefully their games will have good modding supports).

[@Deliveredmean42]

@@Flupperz Mmhmm, Paralives was the first one I heard, and since then the rest follow suit over the years.

[@pilsplease7561]

Not really sims would just crush 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.

[@achmadputra2]

It's too ambitious. The sims don't give you freedom to make your own script, your own quest, you own dialogue. While life by you literally promise you to give you everything. They don't set the boundaries and bloated the game with things that unnecessary.

[@draigaur9543]

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

[@JorgeLopez-qj8pu]

In a vice grip😤

[@ChristManifestee316]

That’s what I was thinking because their wording of the statement they released sounded a lot like some of the stuff they said about CS2

[@atomixfang]

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

[@TitusFlavius11]

Shame. That game looked like it had potential.

[@seradi2000]

EA must be celebrating right now

[@joshallen128]

they really are, i mean the sims the ultimate dollhouse simulator

[@The8bitbeard]

Maybe, but they can't relax. There's still a lot of other life sim competition in the works.

[@joshallen128]

@@The8bitbeard second life freeso and other avatar based online games

[@joshallen128]

@@The8bitbeard hmmm maybe myst online fan ages if you want to get spiritual

[@TruFalco]

@@joshallen128 Second live is a chat app that just so happens has a character you control. Not really a life sim. @The8bitbeard is likely talking about games like Paralives, InZOI, or Vivaland

[@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.

[@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.

[@austindam4592]

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.

[@zaklex3165]

Do you understand the point of EARLY ACCESS for a game that is under development like this one was? I certainly don't think Paradox understands the point of EARLY ACCESS that's for sure.

[@austindam4592]

@@zaklex3165 If you have a poor release, a lot of people aren't going to care if it's EA or not. They just see bad reviews.

[@hippieyoda1993]

@@zaklex3165I think we expect EA to be some form of playable game, rather than just barren software. There’s a lot of games that have basically full content but still have the EA title. We can say EA means it’s not fully released, sure, but looking at the market you see that definition is meaning less and less across the industry. People just judge it for what it is now.

[@zaklex3165]

@@austindam4592 I realized a little later the real reason Paradox scrapped the game and it has nothing to do with whether or not it was meeting internal metrics or not. The real reason...it was being designed to be support post launch with User Generated Content...that goes against the whole we will make a million DLC and charge the customer for it and get rich, i.e., they weren't going to be able to monetize it like their other games. Besides, $20 million over 5 years for a 24 person team is peanuts unless you're having serious financial issues for most big publishers, that's roughly $167k per developer per year.

[@austindam4592]

@@zaklex3165 They knew that was the plan from the beginning though. You could chalk it up to a change in leadership at Paradox, but I wouldn't say there has been a massive difference between the CEOs when it comes to the centrality of DLC to their business model. The unfortunate truth is that the game wasn't looking good when they showed it. I wish that hadn't been the case, because I thought there were some interesting parts of the game that I would have liked to try.

[@agodelianshock9422]

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.

[@sarunotaslt]

I love paradox games but by god do i hate paradox as a company

[@LifeWulf]

Oh hey, that’s Nintendo for me

[@tkg__]

Paradox the game dev is fine. Paradox the publisher is not.

[@Nathan-qc4gz]

Agreed: paradox, Activision, Ubisoft, gaijin, riot, valve. For me it's the rule, not the exception

[@Iridescence93]

I love their older games. There's been a steady decline in quality which lines up with them going all in on the EA DLC model. EU4 was the last Paradox game I really enjoyed without (many) reservations.

[@SpamQGamers]

@@Iridescence93 Yep and one of the things I recently found out with EU4, the DLC's from 10 years ago price has increased to keep up with inflation, I understand a DLC from 2 years ago but 10 years ago being double the price of when I bought the dlc.

[@Retromancer_Rackham]

Paradox think charging people DLC prices for simple jpgs and text is OK. Their once loyal customers disagreed and stopped supporting it. They make decent games, but they are being killed by their own greed and lack of effort.

[@Pangora2]

Indeed, I've been buying expansions and such since my first game was HoI 1. When the Expansions expanded and the DLC added major content I bought. But sometime around HoI IV time its all been selling Focus Trees. If I could pay $1 for a hundred new focus trees, I wouldn't do it. That is like buying guardrails for my sandbox.

[@JohnClarkW]

A Sims competitor would have a built in fanbase ready to pay piles of money for DLC. All of the Sims4 DLCs cost about $1300 last time I checked.

[@hardcorelace7565]

​@@Pangora2this is why i stopped playing hoi4, and why im still playing stellaris. Stellaris dlc add new mechanics and such, not just 3 focus trees that modders could have made for free.

[@Pangora2]

@@hardcorelace7565 indeed, when a new Stellaris dlc is out, half the time I want to replay a campaign with the new mechanics. Dlc makes even a nation I played years ago brand new. Focus trees? That's just my last campaign on rails.

[@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.

[@PaaLenTier]

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

[@nagysuti]

If you feel that canceling this game was "coming out of nowhere" I invite you to check out a few gameplay videos online... The studio was not delivering and looking at the reddit posts the devs were delusional about meeting the expectations.

[@charge416]

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

[@Cruxxy21]

Cities Skylines 2 is a sequel in a genre where they have the market leading game (CS1), so unlikely they’d cancel. Life by You was meant to directly compete with the sims 4 (the genre giant which has had 11 years of content support by now.) It needed a lot more time in the oven, with a reinforced dev team, because the LBY seemed a lot more ambitious than the sims. Imagine CS2 was a competitor to CS1, and had to compete with 9 years of post release content with the absolute stumble that CS2 made out of the gate.

[@halfastep]

I don't know... I think Life By You could have done okay. I'm not entrenched in the Sims, it's not really my kind of game, but I watch content about it from time to time. There's been a community sentiment to get some competitors, anything that isn't EA. I think it might have done okay if they launched in early access. It's not like Inzoi or Paralives is out just yet, and I am so sure a bunch of the Sims content creators (and by extension, some of their audience) would be down to give it a try, simply because it is not EA. It's not like I bought Stardew Valley once and was never interested in/never bought any other farming sims, even if they had less features or less polish, hah. I don't really know how much more work the game needed though, if they had a build that was acceptable for early access.

[@Turamwdd]

@@halfastep Could have done "okay" when? Remember that it is already years past its original release window. And it needed even more time.

[@NotLikeUs17]

If LBY had stuck to its original EA release, it would have released before CS 2. Maybe that would have afforded CS 2 more time to be worked on before being released. Especially if LBY had gone into EA and performed well. One thing that seems pretty clear, it seems like management totally mishandled the LBY.

[@Sick_Pencil]

I think they forced them to release the game. The game needed at least one more year to finish.

[@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.

[@ChristManifestee316]

Waiting on the edge of my seat for Paralives. I was never interested in Life By You (because I don’t like the art style) and quite honestly I straight up QUIT the sims 4 because it’s boring.

[@Eamil]

I'm not sure it's fair to blame only Paradox here. If you look at the reaction on the game's subreddit, no one is especially surprised. People who'd actively been following the game say that the core of the game was entirely lacking in basic functions you'd expect out of The Sims 1 (such as an action queue) while the dev team was constantly adding bells and whistles (like mobile phones with playable minigames?) instead of focusing on improving the core experience. It sounds like the developers were entirely focused on the wrong parts of the game, and their publisher realized the game would need far MORE work in the core gameplay department, and if they released into early access, it would get savage reviews and languish with no players. You can say Paradox should have been aware of the situation and managing the developers to have them focus on the right areas so it never got to this point, but if the developers are so unaware of what they need to do to make a game in the genre work that they prioritized a detailed gardening system over basic social interaction between "sims," I would argue Paradox would have had to micromanage them to an insane degree for the game to have a chance of succeeding.

[@zerg0s]

Why are you so sure those extra bells and whistles weren’t part of the publisher mandated milestones?

[@furrymessiah]

I don't buy Paradox games on principle because of their anti consumer DLC practices. Emphasis on the "Buy."

[@bigego503]

Paradox is very similar to Ubisoft; A million dollars of developmental talent being managed by five cents worth of cement-heads. Good vid

[@EarnestWilliamsGeofferic]

Hey man, please keep the music a bit quieter in the background. For those of us with poor hearing, it's very difficult to parse the speech sometimes.

[@timestimesx7535]

Paralives looks far better than this soulless game.

[@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.

[@Shadowlief]

I really think the suicide squad game should've gotten the same treatment. There is zero chance that they earned enough from the game to even make back the cost of labor for the delayed time.

[@theguardlorenzo5898]

If they cancelled it that means it was such a terrible game that it would hade made them lose further money rather than recover any cost of the previous development, so its probably a good riddance

[@LaylaSpellwind]

It's a shame, because The Sims almost holds like a monopoly over games like the sims. Sure there's others that somewhat come close.... but it would've been nice to have another game in the mix to make EA behave a little less Egregiously with their DLC.

[@R3GARnator]

I'd argue Rimworld and Oxygen Not Included scratch the same itch.

[@LaylaSpellwind]

@@R3GARnator Maybe for you, but certainly not for me, very different itches. Remember, the Sims isn't all about torturing them. Some people enjoy the actual gameplay. ^_^

[@NotLikeUs17]

@@LaylaSpellwindthis was very true at one point. The sims 4 severely lacks gameplay and replay value.

[@LaylaSpellwind]

@@NotLikeUs17 Unless you have all the DLC... Which I do not. But you're right, every time I go back to it thinking "Why don't I play this more." I quickly find out.

[@NotLikeUs17]

@@LaylaSpellwind same here. At one point I did have all of the current DLC, up until last year. I kept telling myself maybe the next pack will be better, but the novelty always wore off pretty quickly because the sims 4 is so shallow and lacks gameplay. The good ideas they seem to have are usually poorly implemented and half baked, especially compared to its predecessors.

[@pyopyonyo3222]

Shame because Sims NEEDS competition. Sims 4 is so bloated, expensive and buggy it's not even worth pirating at this point. Inzoi looks promissing, but if it ends up being f2p things might get turn for the worse too.

[@KA-jm2cz]

There is nothing that dozen more DLC's can't fix! Paradox knows how eager player is to pay for fixes and updates.

[@Roan-xj1mg]

I don't get the drama: they realised it would be shit and will probably cost even more, so they stopped it. If you've dug yourself into a hole, stop digging. People always complain: game gets released early, drama. Game gets delayed to make it better, drama....

[@heatherharrison264]

I am a former fan of Paradox who will no longer buy games from them. When I look at a game and see a list of micro-DLC as long as my arm, I simply give up. I don't want to wade through all that stuff to figure out which ones might actually provide value and which ones are horse armor. On top of that, new games are launched in a broken and incomplete state, and old games eventually get compromised by updates and DLC. Cities: Skylines was great until it got bloated with DLC spam and associated free updates (which made the game less efficient even without the DLC). Surviving Mars got messed up at the end by a broken update and DLC package that had some promising, but poorly implemented, ideas. When I saw the disastrous launch of Cities: Skylines 2, that was the end for me. I was reluctant to jump on the update and DLC train anyway, but then it launched in a terrible state. It's a good thing that I know better than to pre-order games. Before Cities: Skylines 2, Paradox was already close to ending up on my black list. Now, it is there. I'll follow the news out of curiosity, but they will get no more of my money. I never got into the life sim genre because Electronic Arts ended up on my black list long ago, but the concept could be interesting if implemented properly. I think the key here is not to go overboard and try to cover everything. Paradox would have turned it into a micro-DLC train just like The Sims, so I would not have been interested in their take on it. Maybe an indie developer can do something useful with the concept if they keep the scope under control and don't try to turn it into a live service or micro-DLC parade. I'll follow the news on the others that are coming along in the near future.

[@mVic8]

You absolutely nailed this. Agreed, wholeheartedly!

[@JD-vj4go]

I gave up on Paradox after what they did to Star Trek Infinite.

[@Zectifin]

yeah theres a big problem with devs just pumping out DLC and not fixing broken DLC. if theres 10+ DLCs and I have to go through steam and look for the positive and negative reviews then I'm already disappointed. Why is there a DLC that you're asking money for that so bad everyone regrets buying it and you won't fix it?

[@sladewilson9741]

WTF are you talking about? No one cancels good games. They cancel games that suck. There's nothing tragic about that. What would tragic is releasing it and charging people for crap that they know is crap.

[@SeeIAmDead]

Tbf, I really did think the game looked awful compared the other competitor to Sims, Paralives. I'm not really surprised, but I am sad. Sims needs competition to stop their horrible DLCs.

[@ShiftyMoravian]

Paradox is known for having a fuckton of DLC, so I am not sure this would be the way

[@Sultschiem]

Yeah.. the trailer didn't look that great...

[@ai-spacedestructor]

disappointed that we wont ever get the game, i was looking forward to finally having a good sims alternative and they have given up again. im sure given enough time they could have fixed the game with enough delay and if there current games are as great as they say then sure they could afford to fix there problems instead of running away from needing to actually solve the problem.

[@BlueBD]

sims 4 is literally 10 years old and is run like garbage. idk how they didnt think Life By You would not be sucessful competition. at this point just about anything would be better. even if its not an immediate hit as long as they are run better then EA runs the sims it would gain the fame

[@ray101mond]

It's a paradox this game company still exists.

[@Zectifin]

surviving off that Stellaris money.

[@ray101mond]

@@Zectifin And that's the thing with this company. They make a good game but they charge you through the nose with all the DLC that's blatantly overpriced.

[@jaywerner8415]

My reaction to seeing this pop up in my feed: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! EA is MILKING Sims Fans like they have some sort of Monoploy, 20 dollars here 40 dollars their, 60 dollars for this and that. The "Life Sim" genre in a Sims style DESPERATELY needs SERIOUS Competition. I suppose their is Paralives still but Paradox would have helped too.

[@kyoyo9350]

It was absolutely a mistake for them to go to paradox as a publisher. Apparently the devs even tried to find another buyer for the project or the ability to go indie but paradox interactive wouldn't even work with them and would rather screw everyone over and sit on the IP forever.

[@Zectifin]

life by you sounded really cool at first but as they were getting closer and closer it was looking really really rough. Looks like the indies are gonna have to take down the Sims since the other AAAs can't.

[@AleksiJoensuu]

Inozi? 😂 It's Inzoi, as in, enjoy 😂

[@zaklex3165]

They should have looked at selling the Tectonic team and game for at least 20 million or so and recoup their expenses.

[@NotLikeUs17]

It’s a tax write off for them

[@zaklex3165]

@@NotLikeUs17 Depending on the laws of the country they're incorporated in, yes...not all countries allow 100% tax right offs some only allow proportional. Still, 20 mil should have been a drop in the bucket and not even something to be worrying about after 5 years...now had it been closer to 40 - 50 million, then I could see a problem, but 20, not even close in my opinion, not with todays development costs.

[@NotLikeUs17]

@@zaklex3165 I agree. It costs EA $40 million to publish and create the sims 4, btw.

[@Synystr7]

Honestly, after KSP2, I appreciate them not taking my money and then closing the studio.

[@seichhornchen]

Oof. That's a painfully low bar to clear.

[@Verschal]

Paradox a different business model then ea? don't hold your breath.

[@profhobo8681]

Luckily, we still have Sims 2. The peak of life simulators. And full of mods by this point in time

[@zaklex3165]

You're wrong about them being screwed if they had to compete against the other new games...I don't think they would be competing against The Sims 5 unless they delayed release until 2027- 28...that's how far out I think it is based on the changes being made to 4.

[@micheljolicoeur6094]

When will these companies learn that EGS exclusivity is a DEATH wish. Cutting out the vast majority of PC gamers is NOT going to help you regardless how much money Tim Sweeney throws your way.

[@fleetadmiralj]

I mean, if you know you have an unfinished game on your hand that either 1) will suck and/or 2) if you work hard and long enough to make it not suck, will still lose you money, it probably is the correct choice to just can it and eat your sunken costs. There are a lot of companies that refuse to do that. Of course, that doesn't say anything about the management that led them to having to do that.

[@billmaster1157]

Life By You was never my first, second or third choice for a Sims competitor. From the start, I suspected something would derail the project or would be massively undeveloped and unimpressive. As far off as they are, we still have Inzoi, Paralives and AlterLife to look forward to, which are my first, second ahd third choice in no particular order for a competitor to the Sims.

[@gantzuka]

Thanks for the suggestions, I never knew these exist.

[@Evilene121162]

Alter life is still a thing? Steam has shown no updates for quite some time.

[@om58499]

Is any of them moddable cause lif by you was suppose to be

[@Cythil]

A bit sad to see it they canned it. I want an alternative to EAs The Sims. I like the Sims 3 with it holistic world and very free customization. And this seems to gone toward that direction. And I would so much prefer the typical monetization route of Paradox then EAs billion way to drain money from you in any way they can image.

[@MAXIMILLIONtheGREAT]

This was actually one of the few games I was looking forward to.

[@WooShell]

LBY would just have been what the games market needs to kick EA's Sims butts.. just like Palworld hopefully delivered a much-needed kick to Gamefreak and Ninvento.

[@taloncore]

The whole point of Early Access is to let the communities have a look and help the developer understand the communities' wants and desires. RELEASE THE BLOODY GAME! - and the only people who should be loosing their jobs are the C-Suite and UP in Papa Paradox!

[@Sick_Pencil]

With cancelling the game, they can file it as tax cut.

[@Cibbic]

You clearly don't understand. They ofcourse couldn't meet expectations, and they've been doing this for a long time . They don't have infinite budget and they're not a big studio.

[@vensroofcat6415]

While catching as a story, the game engine behind it had to be insanely complicated. Be 5 games in one. Consider Star citizen ambitions just bigger. They bit larger chunk than they could chew.

[@irisbaggins]

Fun fact! I originally pre-ordered Bloodlines 2 when it was supposed to release around the original date of Cyberpunk! Guess who had to beg Steam for a refund months after the fact as I realised it would never release?

[@larkendelvie]

The management at the publishing office needs to be reworked starting at the top. I also think something is going on with the play testing (not QA) but is it fun test. Paradox should not be having last minute crisis on this many titles unless they were just focused on checking boxes without actually playing their own games.

[@Diarmuhnd]

Haven't given Paradox a penny in ages ... horrible company

[@mVic8]

Idk how you can have 24 devs working for 5 years and can’t even release it into Early Access. No one looked at the game as a whole until a few weeks ago? And this is after they botched every other game they released this past year? Nothing learned. Repeating the same mistakes over and over and expecting a different result. Seriously, how is the CEO still there? They need an overhaul, starting from the top.

[@AngladaFrankFrankyvape]

To be honest I respect Paradox for stopping the project instead of releasing a stinker. Sad fore the 24 devs but in that case it is understandable.

[@thebusiness8212]

“It is now clear the game will not be able to meet our expectations.” Because at Paradox the barebones slop we usually churn out then hypermonetize is the gold standard! Life by You must have been too feature complete for their expectations.

[@grtninja]

They delayed the cities skylines 2 update today too, after promising june 3-19th. I won't bother updating content I've created until they get their act together. I want to see some upper management get the can instead of hard-working developers. The gaming industry as a whole need to stop wasting dev's time and customer's money.

[@Roan-xj1mg]

Thats what I mean. They release a faulty game/dlc/update: people cry about it. They delay it to make better: also cry

[@nuclear_caliber-we3pc]

All their recent games performance is not optimized. The one I'm most upset about is Star Trek Infinite.

[@flamingcroatan3739]

Goodwill with Game companies are dropping like flies

[@melissat9586]

I can’t imagine how Paradox thought LBY was in worse shape than that trash fire EA released Aka Sims 4.

[@myown8849]

I think for a company to cancel a project that had a lot of followers it had to be something big. Maybe EA called plagiarism or Life By You did not have anything ready. But we will all know the truth in due time.

[@Unreal5Dev]

Things like this are why I'm not going with a publisher for my game. I've had some offers but it's going to be a hard no. There are definite upsides, but the risks are too great.

[@NotLikeUs17]

I hope a lot more devs start following in your shoes. I’d rather support the devs directly than support corporate publishers.

[@AusSkiller]

The main problem is that publishers want to make great games but they won't give the time or money required to do that to the developers, and when developers tell them it isn't possible the publisher tells them to do it anyway leading to obvious failure.

[@OhNoTheFace]

I mean, if it truly was such a far ways off it may be a good call. Depends if that was BS or not

[@warzshadow9701]

I was very mad. Wrote Paradox a reply back about canceling Life By You.

[@Deliveredmean42]

Well, I guess we will have to do with Paralives, Tiny Lives, inZOI or Vivaland for now...

[@SynthLizard8]

I don't blame Paradox in this instance, it's not like they didn't give the studio enough resources and time and it looked soulless in the end.

[@ThaPinkGuy]

Life by you was looking really rough 5 months ago and their livestreams were very vapid and didn’t really show promise.

[@TheGeneReyva]

Paradox saw too many mentions of tax write-offs on the WAN show.

[@bartlett2335]

They don’t actually make money if they are just declaring the money they spent as being a lost expense… they just won’t pay taxes on it. They still lost the money lol

[@user-lp7qo9cl8w]

I like how they cant even finish making a broken turd for 20 million dollars. Meanwhile games like Lethal company and Rimworld were made by 1 dev, and pennies on the dollar.

[@Dan016]

Typical triple A bloat. Once a studio gets up to a certain number (gonna guess around 80 or so) the “too many cooks in the kitchen” effect starts to take place. On average, indies is where it’s at with smaller teams, but more streamlined, just my thoughts

[@Emiltecknar]

So i guess you just ignored the part where he Said this type of games is really hard end expansiv to make?

[@kailyspenc409]

​@@Dan016 team was only 25 ppl

[@Mankorra_Gomorrah]

In some ways it is easier to make a game as a single person because nothing ever gets lost in translation or delayed because someone who was assigned a task got sick. Having a large team trades efficiency for serial production power getting more things done at once even if those things may not fit together perfectly or be as high quality as initially envisioned. The corporate mindset is that these problems can be smoothed over later with either more employees cleaning up the mess of other employees or just assigning existing devs to fix things post launch. With a one person team all of that is largely avoided.

[@ragokueod]

This is so disappointing. I've been excited about this since they announced, and now that it feels like it was a waste to even get excited. Maybe they need a new CEO who can plan for the long-term.

[@ekscalybur]

Paradox just cemented their position on the list of Devs/Pubs that I wouldn't buy from with someone else's money.

[@Jcsim13]

Was so incredibly disappointed at the cancellation. Some of the devs were awesome and open about the struggles over development, which was very refreshing. Many of LBY’s fans wish this title was crowd funded or under a different studio using the same marketing.

[@TrackMediaOnly]

Honestly, the game at least doesn't seem to be a loss. Everything I had seen for it only showed more of the "games for modern gamer" trash and from a technical stand point looked like it was going to be as bad or worse situation than "City Skylines 2". I can't say I'm a particular fan, but played Sims 2 and 3(never touched 4) as just something to play sometimes. So a good competitive game in the genre might be interesting, but this wasn't looking like it would be good and certainly not competitive. When show casing a game you show the best of what you have, so when that was the best of what they had what must their worst look like?

[@Zectifin]

I get some places are tech hubs, but I can't wait for people to realize you don't need to have an expensive office building for people to make games together. Just hire a bunch of randos from across the country/world and have them all work on the game together. people can live where they want and they'll be more loyal if they don't have to quit to move somewhere cheaper or to be with family or whatever. Then you don't have to pay for an expensive office building.

[@om58499]

The place got shut down if you move from another country and that happen how will you feel

[@pixielst]

Can't we just have the Sims 3 with updated graphic that won't refuse to run with all DLCs installed?

[@YammoYammamoto]

the saddest part about Cities Skylines 2 - is that instead of fixing the gameplay... they added a completely new economy system, completely untested - and waddayaknow, it was a WRECK. RIP anyone who preordered that pile of sheit.

[@Shadowcam00]

This isn't remotely surprising to me. Life by You had bland visuals and poor performance. There was no way it would seriously compete with the sims unless it spent most of the next decade in early access, and we have enough of those never-finished games as it is.

[@zaklex3165]

The big difference between The Sims and Life by You would have been that LbY was specifically designed to live on with UGC(User Generated Content).

[@TheT0nedude]

I haven't heard the term Loading Screen in a while, it conjures up memories of waiting for a game to load from tape, and watching a screen load up while reading from said tape. This was during games playing infancy in the 8 bit era... I miss those days.

[@hundvd_7]

I'll be honest. From an outsider's perspective that wasn't necessary "hyped" about the game, but was definitely looking into it and seeing their progress, I can absolutely believe this was the right call. It should have been made way earlier, of course. And that's fully management's fault. But I just don't believe the game could have really lived up to gamer' expectations. The ones that aren't said out loud. The stuff we take for granted in The Sims.

[@ple8379]

There's just one thing I want to know with this, that I haven't seen anyone talking about, what happened to people's money they paid for pre-orders? Last time I checked, the option to buy the game was still available next day after they cancelled the project. I never was interested in this game, so I never even thought to pre-order it, but from videos on KZbin I knew this option was available. I'm assuming many people did buy it before it was cancelled, so, what happened with that? Why is nobody talking about this, was it just a non-functioning button that didn't actually let you pay or what? Because if people did spend their money on the game only to have it cancelled few months later, Imma call it a scam. Thank god I didn't get it, but if I did, I'd surely want to know what happened to my money. I don't think they have the ability to give money back to every single person that ordered the game on every single platform. Can someone explain this?

[@lucasLSD]

This is a shame, the game was everything I wanted sims 4 to be following 3, it was just ugly but graphics can be patched, now EA will continue to reign supreme.

[@garbski42]

The Sims franchise does not listen as we play through a myriad of glitches hoping they'll get fixed but no, they just make it worse. Was looking forward to "Like by You" just because...

[@Hattori_Fujiyama]

i was actually excited by this game for a bit. after cs2 though i wasn't gonna buy it anyways.. i don't get this at all though. the game is basically done, just fucking launch it..

[@MsK4YY]

Tbh I wasnt looking forward to the game anyways. The quality and all looked like it wouldnt be optimized for any home PC. i'm hoping paralives doesnt get cancelled.

[@anupamgoswami842]

Pardox paid model is not worth investing upon for me. First release a bare bones base and then start charging premium for incremental small content drops.

[@speedingoffence]

So what exactly DOES Paradox have coming?

[@Savvysnek]

all the pressure is on EU5

[@KevinJDildonik]

Hot Take: Life By You was a garbage game and it deserves to be canceled. I get it. Everyone wants Cities: The Sims. But they had a number of dev plays of beta builds on Twitch. The game was laughably far from any kind of release. The devs barely had any idea what features were in or how anything worked. Everything was fine tuned to sell microtransactions and DLC. At best, the game looked like a cheap knockoff of The Sims. It was Early Access trash. If you like spending $200 on DLC for trash early access titles, more power to you. But this was not a worthwhile game to me.

[@informitas0117]

Modding would have saved it easily. This is just to prove a point to shareholders.

[@VNZ-Games]

Hi Bellular! I’m creating the game Tales of Shadowlands (it’s on Steam, similar to Pax Dei), but we are very small and unknown (although our page had 200k visits in 10 days). Would be honored to have you and your community testing it for free whenever we get closed to early access. Thanks a lot for all the quality content you created on all this years. I’ve always watched but it’s my first time commenting.

[@JulyFlame]

Part of what I suspect might have been the problem for LBY is that I think Paradox was intending/wanting LBY to integrate with C:S2, based on similarities between the two, Cims having bizarrely high quality textures at launch, and the fact LBY's initial early release was supposed to be fairly close to C:S2's own launch. The Sims and Sim City used to have their own integrations and I could see that idea being attractive to Paradox. So it's not possibly not just LBY having its own internal issues, but C:S2's own utter failure of a launch.

[@jassykat]

I know what happened, Paradox saw that cool Chinese game that was better than their game in pretty much every way and knew their target demographic would rather play that one instead of theirs, so they cut their loses.