The editor Paradox Interactive had created the development team Paradox Tectonic to create Life by You, a life simulation game strongly inspired by The Sims, but with a more realistic approach. A title announced at the start of 2023 and which has continued to be postponed. Last I heard, it was supposed to be released at the beginning of June.
Today, Paradox Interactive gives news of Life by You, but they are not good at all. Mattias Lilja, Vice President of the General Management of Paradox Interactivespoke on the editor’s forum to announce that Life by You is canceled. Here is the press release explaining the reasons for this cancellation:
Hello everyone,
Unfortunately, we have decided to cancel the release of our long-awaited life simulation, Life by You. This is an incredibly difficult decision to make and is a clear failure on Paradox’s part to meet our own and the community’s expectations. We realize that this raises big questions; Here, we hope to shed at least some light on why we chose to cancel, rather than delay, as we communicated earlier.
Life by You has been in the works for a long time and we are very excited about the promise and potential of this game. We always hoped that it would be able to leave a mark in this exciting and new genre for us. That’s why we chose to delay it twice, to give the studio and the game a chance to realize the potential we saw. For each delay we made, we saw incremental improvements, which, in hindsight, led us to focus on the details rather than the big picture.
A few weeks ago, we decided to delay the Early Access release in order to re-evaluate Life by You, as we still felt the game fell short in some key areas. Even if a deadline extension was an option, once we took that break to get a broader view of the game, it became clear to us that the path to an exit we had confidence in was far too long and uncertain. This isn’t to say that the game didn’t show any promising qualities; Life by You had a number of strong points and the hard work of a dedicated team who worked to make them happen. However, when we get to a point where we think more time won’t get us close enough to a version we’re happy with, then we think it’s best to stop. This is obviously difficult and disappointing for everyone who has devoted their time and enthusiasm to this project, especially when our decision comes so late in the process.
Ultimately, our job is to release games that are fun, interesting, and challenging for our players, and every decision we make should be made with that goal in mind. When we succeed, we earn our salary. So how can we make sure we don’t end up here again? Honestly, there are no real guarantees. Games are hard to get right, and we will certainly make mistakes that, as these things unfold, always become painfully apparent in hindsight, but still shouldn’t reach that kind of magnitude. We need to take a long, hard look at what got us here and see what changes we need to make to become better. Ultimately, our mission remains the same and we will continue to take whatever steps are necessary to achieve it.
Life by You will never see the light of day, let’s hope that Paradox Tectonic do not pay the price for this cancellation with subsequent layoffs. In any case, EA Games and Maxis can breathe, The Sims still has no serious competitor. You can find all the expansion packs of Sims 4 on Amazon.
| Clint008 Editor – Tester |
