Life By You, the Sims-like management game previously troubled by several delays, has been canceled by Paradox Interactive, and Californian studio Paradox Tectonic have been shut down. The news of the game’s cancellation came last night through a forum post, with Paradox deputy CEO Mattias Lilja painting a picture of a game still too “lacking” for more development time to fix. This morning, it emerged that Paradox Tectonic, the studio working on the game, have been shuttered, via GameWatcher.
“This is difficult and drastic news for our colleagues at Tectonic, who’ve worked hard on Life by You’s Early Access release,” said Paradox Interactive CEO Fredrik Wester, in the manner of a CEO making what’s increasingly looking like the sort of decision such people in the game industry don’t actually find all that difficult to make. “Sadly, with cancellation of their sole project, we have to take the tough decision to close down the studio,” he said, echoing the refrain used by such people in the game industry who don’t actually seem to consider such a decision all that tough.
In last year’s financial report, Paradox Interactive reported record revenue, but a decrease in profits. Cities Skylines 2 made them big bucks in the last quarter, despite launch woes. On the other end of the spectrum, there was the $23 million flop of strategy game The Lamplighters League, prior to which they laid off a “significant portion” of studio Harebrained Schemes, who they then cut loose last October.
Life By You itself has been subject to several delays leading up to this point, the most recent being an indefinite delay back in March. The game was originally set to launch at the start of this month, on the 4th of June. Last August, Katharine (RPS peace) found a demo of the game quite promising.
Best of luck to all affected in what has become a saddening and frustratingly common occurrence for developers of late. Just this week Embracer shut down Alone In The Dark reboot studio Pieces Interactive. Back in May, Take-Two shut down OlliOlli World devs Roll7, and Microsoft closed down Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, and Alpha Dog Games.