A now-fired developer at Paradox claims the team behind its The Sims competitor spent “a month in purgatory” before the studio closed.
Game designer Willem Delventhal said on LinkedIn that they were “devastated” by the cancellation of Life by You, calling the recent events “a real show.” Paradox declined to comment when contacted by IGN.
Swedish games company Paradox, best known for Crusader Kings, Cities Skylines and Stellaris, shuttered Berkeley, California-based Tectonic just hours after canceling Life by You, a move that affected the studio’s 24 employees.
“This is difficult and drastic news for our colleagues at Tectonic, who have been working hard on the Early Access release of Life by You,” said Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive.
“Unfortunately, due to the cancellation of their only project, we have to make the difficult decision to close the studio. We are extremely grateful for their hard work in bringing Paradox to a new genre.”
Life by You, which Tectonic had been working on since 2019, initially set an early access release date for September 2023, but this was pushed back to May 2024 before Paradox announced an additional delay until June 4. Two weeks before June 4, Paradox postponed the game. indefinitely.
Delventhal claimed that Paradox told Tectonic Life by You it would not launch until two weeks before its June 4 release date, and that staff only found out they had lost their jobs when the studio’s closure was publicly announced this week . Delventhal said Tectonic tried to save Life by You by finding potential buyers or even going indie, but to no avail.
“I’ve known for a while that we might close,” Delventhal said. “We were actively working on a hyper-customizable life sim called Life By You. An indie answer to the Sims’ aging IP, but instead heavily focused on UGC.
“And in that respect we did extremely well.
“I can’t share specific numbers, but I can say that we had an internal benchmark that we were aiming for and it was approved, and we exceeded that number by a significant amount. We also got a thumbs up a few weeks before the launch.
“Two weeks before the launch we were told that we would not be launching. And especially now that we have all lost our jobs. We were only informed of this via a public announcement.
“We were not told why. Instead, we spent a month in purgatory doing everything we could to prove to them that we were worth launching, including things like finding potential buyers or proposing to cut ties and go indie to go. We heard virtually nothing back.
“I was warned not to write anything about this experience. That it could harm my future career or even cause legal action to be taken against me. I have chosen to ignore these warnings.
“To be honest, I have a suspicion about what happened. And while I can’t suspect it, I’m sure you have a suspicion too. As a business owner, some of them are understandable, but many are not. We were a strong team on a strong project, ready to launch to a strong audience.
“Actually, I’d like to be a lot more fire and brimstone about it. I’m pretty angry, I’m not going to lie. But I try to remain friendly and respectful. So instead I say: This industry has become a place where you can deliver more than expected, have AA money behind you and still have the carpet pulled two weeks before launch.”
When Paradox announced the cancellation of Life by You, Wester issued a statement emphasizing that the game would not “live up to our expectations.”
“We have long hoped for Life by You and the potential we saw in it, but it is now clear that the game will not live up to our expectations,” said Wester. “A version that we would be happy with is too far away and that is why we are making the difficult decision to cancel the release.”
Times are tough for Paradox after a string of high-profile failures. Wester admitted in his statement that “we have performed poorly in recent releases,” while emphasizing that “we have a very solid financial position and a strong core game portfolio, making us confident in our future.”
Last year’s disastrous release Skylines of cities 2, which developer Colossal Order is still working on, was just one title that hit both Paradox’s bottom line and reputation. In October 2023, Paradox called The Lamplighters League a “major disappointment” as it was forced to take a $22 million write-down. Paradox has also postponed the prison simulation Prison architect 2 a number of times, the last until September this year, after the discovery of ‘unexpected problems that occur too often’. The Paradox-published Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 has also undergone a difficult development, although a release date now seems in sight.
Tectonic’s closure is the latest in a series of studio closures and layoffs that have hit the video game industry hard in recent years. Thousands of employees have been affected by cuts across the sector, with redundancies at companies such as Microsoft, Sony and Embracer, to name a few. Just this week Embracer shuttered Pieces Interactive after Alone in the Dark failed to meet sales expectations.
Wesley is the UK news editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.