A huge bucket of cold water for all players, including myself, who have been waiting for Life by You, a title that has already seen several delays in the little over a year since its announcement, in March 2023, until now, but finally seemed to be close to seeing the light. So we are faced with a movement that is rather difficult to understand, although a look at the company’s recent history may shed some light.

But let’s start from the beginning. In case you didn’t know, Life by You Yippee was a life simulator in the style of The Sims, which, however, promised to provide an important development compared to the popular Electronic Arts saga, which, let’s recall, has not seen the arrival of a new installment since the launch of The Sims 4, that is, in September 2014. It is true that EA told us about the Rene project at the end of 2022, but we are still waiting. Therefore, this title, developed by Paradox Tectonic and distributed by Paradox Interactive, promised to be to The Sims what Cities: Skylines was to SimCity at the time.

Its launch was originally announced for September 2023, but a few months before that we had news of the first delay pushing it back to early March 2024. And with about a month to go until the new date, another delay was confirmed, pushing it back to the current month of June. Then the latest news we had early last May is that Paradox confirmed the launch of Life by You in June. So all indications were that we might end up enjoying it this month, but at the end of May there were voices once again talking about another delay…

So another delay was expected, but what didn’t happen in the end, and that’s it Paradox has definitively canceled the Life by You project, as we can read in this official report. A statement signed by Mattias Lilja, Deputy CEO of Paradox, expressed how difficult it was to make this decision, but that it was made due to doubts that it would be possible in a reasonable period of time to bring the game to the level that was raised. Yes, he acknowledges the good work the developer has done so far, but states that they don’t want to compromise the quality commitment they want to make with their clients.

It certainly is bittersweet news Well, as I mentioned at the beginning, there was a lot of interest in this launch. That a publisher would rather cancel a project at this point than release a game that doesn’t meet established standards is certainly something to be commended. Although, and I can’t help but wonder what has changed inside the house so that a few months ago Life by You seemed almost ready and now it seems endless and cancelled.

Well, I lied, I didn’t ask myself, and although I don’t have explicit evidence of this, it is quite clear to me that the reason for this change is the title: Cities: Skylines 2, one of the worst releases of Paradox, which ended in glory last April, when the company decided to release a regrettable DLC for 9.99 euros, despite not even fixing the problems of the base game yet. As we told you back then, they eventually had to back down because of the pressure, but his image was greatly affectedwhich undoubtedly forced a thorough revision of its quality standards.