"Cities: Skylines II": Paradox parts ways with developer Colossal Order

Publisher Paradox Interactive and game development company Colossal Order have amicably parted ways. As Paradox announced in an announcement on the official forum, the Finnish studio will no longer work on “Cities: Skylines II” after the completion of some final updates. The further development of the city-building simulation will be taken over by Iceflake Studios, an internal team of Paradox Interactive, starting in early 2026. The rights to the Cities: Skylines brand remain with the publisher.

The separation is not surprising: “Cities: Skylines II” has been struggling with massive technical problems since its launch in October 2023. The launch was only for PC, and the planned console version was postponed several times. In July 2024, Colossal Order finally postponed the console release indefinitely because performance targets were not met. Even on high-end PCs, the game only ran at a low frame rate, which angered the community.

The relationship between the developer and the player base was particularly conflict-ridden in March 2024, when Colossal Order released the DLC “Beach Properties” for 10 euros while the main game was still full of bugs. The expansion received devastating reviews on Steam. Colossal Order then publicly apologized and refunded all buyers the purchase price. The expansion was repurposed as a free add-on.

At the end of 2023, the studio had already postponed all planned DLC packages to focus on fixing fundamental performance issues. Missing Level of Detail models and inefficient CPU usage made the game a challenge even for powerful systems. The announced improvements progressed only slowly.

Restart with developer change?

With the handover to Iceflake Studios, Paradox Interactive is initiating a restart. The Finnish studio is to be responsible for all updates, new content, and the console version of “Cities: Skylines II” from 2026 onward. When the Xbox and PlayStation versions will actually be released remains unclear. The console version, originally announced for October 2023, was already postponed several times to spring 2024, then autumn 2024, before being completely canceled.

Colossal Order achieved a surprising success with its predecessor “Cities: Skylines” in 2015 and was able to build on the genre benchmark SimCity. The studio worked with Paradox Interactive for over 15 years. Both sides did not disclose where the Colossal Order is heading after the separation and what new projects are being worked on.

(mki)