Life by You Gets Cancelled After Third Delay

The highly anticipated The Sims competitor has reached the end of its development journey. After receiving numerous delays by the team, deeming the product unprepared for release at the time, the product has reached an official closure. A forum post created by Mattias Lilja, the Deputy CEO at Paradox Interactive, is a four-paragraph letter talking about what led to the decision to finish the development process for Life by You.

The post goes on to explain that the team decided to hold off on the Early Access release, and that got them to re-evaluate the current state of the title as a whole. Despite initially delaying the title indefinitely, the ultimate decision that Paradox came to was that for the game's vision to come to fruition, it would take a lot more resources than they were willing to offer it.

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.

Of course, the team acknowledges the fact that Life by You seemed to show promise, but its early development stages, despite years of being in production, seemed to be too large a task to undertake. Following the recent failure of numerous Paradox Interactive titles — such as the Mixed release of Cities: Skylines 2 — they couldn't afford to release another project they weren't confident in.

We have to take a long and hard look at what led us here and see what changes we have to make to become better. In the end, our mission remains the same, and we'll continue to take whatever steps we need to do just that.

The community response in the forums is positive despite the fact that recent layoffs have led to outrage among gamers. Many criticised Life by You for seeming incomplete and directionless in the latest reveals and lifestreams that it had. Notably, however, many seemed to resonate with the reasons for cancellation, and there was a lot of support for Paradox Interactive, many stating that they're hoping to see improvement in the products that get released in the coming years.