Paradox Interactive has announced that it is cancelling Life by You, its upcoming life sim game, which was being billed as a competitor to EA’s The Sims. Mattias Lilja, deputy CEO of Paradox Interactive, announced the game’s cancellation with a message shared on the official Paradox forums. This follows an indefinitely delay for the game’s early access release on Steam, which was announced in May.
Explaining Life by You’s cancellation, Lilja explained that following the recent indefinitely delay for the game’s early access version, Paradox Interactive took “a wider view” of the project, following which the company realized that though the game had seen “incremental improvements” following the delays it had been hit with, it was still too far away from being at a level of quality that the company would have been satisfied with.
“A few weeks back, we decided to hold off on an Early Access release in order to re-evaluate Life by You, as we still felt that the game was lacking in some key areas,” Lilja wrote. “Though a time extension was an option, once we took that pause to get a wider view of the game, it became clear to us that the road leading to a release that we felt confident about was far too long and uncertain.”
“This is not to say the game has not shown any promising qualities; Life by You had a number of strengths and the hard work of a dedicated team that went into realizing them,” Lilja continues. “However, when we come to a point where we believe that more time will not get us close enough to a version we would be satisfied with, then we believe it is better to stop. This is obviously tough and disappointing for everyone who poured their time and enthusiasm into this project, especially when our decision comes so late in the process.”
How the game’s cancellation will affect its development team at Paradox Tectonic remains to be seen. The company will hopefully be providing further details on that front in the coming days and weeks. Stay tuned for all the updates.
