Living through youthe potential of Paradox Interactive The Sims4 competitor, has been cancelled. Paradox Interactive deputy CEO Mattias Lilja announced the game’s cancellation in a post on the publisher’s forum. “Unfortunately, we have decided to cancel the release of our highly anticipated life sim Living through you,” Lilja wrote. “This was an incredibly difficult decision and it is a clear failure by Paradox to meet both our own and the community’s expectations.”
Living through you was last scheduled for early access release on June 4, but Paradox postponed the match indefinitely on May 20. The May delay marked the third time the early access release was pushed back – it was first targeted for September 2023, March 5, and then June 4. Lilja said the game had “incremental improvements” with each delay, but the road to release was “way too long and uncertain.” Here’s Lilja on the delay:
A few weeks ago we decided to delay an Early Access release to reevaluate Living through you, as we still felt like the game fell short in some key areas. While an extension of time was an option, once we took that pause to get a broader picture of the game, it became clear to us that the path to a release we were confident in was far too was long and uncertain. This isn’t to say the game hasn’t shown promising qualities; Living through you had a number of strengths and the hard work of a dedicated team who worked to realize them. However, when we get to a point where we believe that more time won’t get us close enough to a version that we would be satisfied with, then we think it’s better to stop. This is obviously tough and disappointing for everyone who has invested their time and enthusiasm in this project, especially since 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 all our decisions should be made with that goal in mind. If we do that well, we earn our wages. How do we ensure that we don’t end up here again? Honestly, there are no real guarantees. Games are hard to get right, and we’re bound to make mistakes, which, as these things go, always become painfully obvious in retrospect, but shouldn’t reach such a magnitude anyway. We need to look long and hard at what led us here and see what changes we need to make to get better. Ultimately, our mission remains the same, and we will continue to take whatever steps are necessary to do just that.
In a press release published on the Paradox Interactive websiteCEO Fredik Wester said a version of it Living through you that met the publisher’s expectations was ‘too far away’. Paradox Interactive expects second-quarter financial results to be “negatively impacted” by the write-off of the game’s development costs, which Wester said is contributing to poor performance in recent releases.
“We have performed poorly in recent releases,” Wester said. “Even though we are now starting new projects in a different way, it is clear that we need to make further changes so that the quality is more consistent and the promises we make to our players are delivered. We need to evaluate how we manage projects and how we organize ourselves, because we will and must get better. We have a very solid financial position and a strong core gaming portfolio, which gives us confidence in our future.”
Paradox has announced Paradox Tectonic, the studio in charge of development Living through youin 2019. Led by former Sims leader and Second Life creator Linden Labs CEO Rod Humble, Paradox Tectonic officially announced Living through you in 2023. Living through you It was expected to differentiate itself from the crowded life sim genre with deeper role-playing elements. With the cancellation of Living through youthat genre has become slightly less crowded, but that is still there Paralives, inZOI, Project Rene (also known as The Sims5) and an untitled life simulator from Midsummer Studios.