Cities: Skylines II developer delays DLC to to focus on fixing the base game

Cities: Skylines II developer Colossal Order is delaying the city building simulation’s expansion roadmap. After numerous complaints about the PC game’s performance (and the delay of console versions until 2024), the team decided to pause rapid patches, digging instead into more time-consuming performance and bug fixes. CEO Mariina Hallikainen apologized for the delay in a blog post, explaining, “We must not rush new content out before the base [game] is ready for it.”

The development delay pushes most Cities: Skylines II expansion pass content back by a quarter. The Beach Properties asset pack has been postponed to Q1 2024 from Q4 2023. Two creator packs (Modern Architecture and Urban Promenades), initially scheduled for Q1 2024, will arrive in Q2 2024. Finally, the Deluxe Relax and Soft Rock radio stations are knocked back to Q1 and Q2 2024, respectively. Meanwhile, the Bridges & Ports expansion remains in the Q2 2024 slot.

Hallikainen’s blog post cited a need to address more time-consuming bug fixes and performance problems before rolling out new content. “We have made it through the quicker fixes and we’re now digging into the ones that require a bit more work,” she wrote. The CEO mentioned applying fixes for graphical details to improve GPU performance before moving on to CPU optimizations, including stutter fixes, while ensuring a fast and smooth experience. She said the development team is currently sifting through players’ bug reports, identifying 100 reproducible issues the team will look into and another 100 reports requiring more investigation.

Colossal Order / Paradox Interactive

Weeks before launch, Colossal Order raised the game’s minimum and recommended specs, warning, “We have not achieved the benchmark we targeted.” However, it and its publisher, Paradox Interactive, opted to continue with Cities: Skylines II’s planned release date. When it arrived in late October, fans, hoping for a stable experience expanding on the 2015 original, panned the product they got. They complained about shoddy performance, buggy core gameplay elements and an overall lack of optimization relative to the PC hardware it runs on — even, in some cases, on fairly high-end setups.

Despite fans’ disappointment with the stability of the hotly anticipated title, Colossal Order seems to have received the message. “Once the PC version is where we want it to be, we will be focusing on the console release and DLC content,” Hallikainen wrote.

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