Cities: Skylines 2 publisher Paradox Interactive has announced that it’s parted ways with the game’s developer, Colossal Order, and that a new studio will be taking over ongoing development on the city-builder.
In an update on the game’s official forum, Paradox says the decision for itself and Colossal Order to split was a mutual one, and that said decision was made “thoughtfully and in the interest of both teams” in order to ensure “the strongest possible future” for Cities: Skylines.
The new developer will be Iceflake Studios, whose name you may know from post-apocalyptic city-building sim Surviving the Aftermath. Paradox says Iceflake is already “hard at work getting into the nuts and bolts of Cities: Skylines 2“.
Before Colossal Order departs Cities: Skylines 2, however, the developer will “implement a few additional updates”, including the addition of bikes to the game, as well as new Old Town buildings and lots of bug fixes and improvements.
You can also look forward to a beta version of asset support for the game’s Editor “before year-end”, but after that, development will switch to Iceflake, who will take over starting from the beginning of next year.
Cities: Skylines 2 was released in late October 2023, and it’s fair to say the game wasn’t exactly received well at launch (by its community, at the very least), with players complaining about poor performance.
Colossal Order and Paradox subsequently implemented a number of updates aimed at addressing common performance woes, but whether they’ve been successful is a matter of opinion; the game is still sitting at a Mixed rating on Steam at time of writing.
That’s without mentioning Cities: Skylines 2‘s long-in-development console versions, which have been delayed a number of times and which still don’t have anything approaching a release date yet.
Perhaps Iceflake Studios will be able to fix the common issues that still appear to plague Cities: Skylines 2, but we won’t be finding out until next year. You can grab the game right now on PC via Steam.
