When thinking about a video game that is committed to being a life simulator, it is normal that the first name that comes to mind is The Sims. The saga developed by Maxis and Electronic Arts is one of the most successful in history since it began its journey more than 20 years ago, but a company that had decided to stand up to it was Paradox Interactive with Life by You.
The development of this game has gone through its ups and downs, although it has finally passed away. Mattias Lilja, the team president, has published an extensive statement in which he has announced that the decision has been made to cancel it completelyso those who were eager to try it will be left wanting.
As he has well confessed, it is a very tough decision that Paradox Interactive has not hesitated to classify as a failure. The title had been running for too long, but after so much time running it is clear that was not meeting expectationsdespite the fact that its managers were convinced that it hid enormous potential.
Unfortunately, we have decided to cancel the launch of our long-awaited life simulator Life by You. This has been an incredibly difficult decision to make and is a clear failure on Paradox's part to meet our and the community's expectations. We realize this raises some important questions; here we hope to shed at least some light on why we opted for cancellation, rather than delaying it as we previously communicated.
Life by You has been in development for far too long and we have been very excited about the promise and potential of this game. Our hope was always that we could make a mark in this new and exciting genre for us. That's why we've chosen to delay it twice, to give the studio and the game a fair chance to take advantage of the potential we saw. For every delay we've made, we've seen incremental improvements, which in retrospect may well have led us to focus on the details rather than the big picture.
The development of Life by You It started in 2019, although it was not until last year when it was officially presented. At that time it was indicated that it was going to be published in early access form, although has not stopped accumulating one delay after anothersince it was originally going to arrive in September 2023, from there its arrival was postponed until March 5, 2024 and it was supposed to have seen the light on June 4.
![Life By You 02](https://i.blogs.es/566ea5/life-by-you-02/450_1000.webp)
![Life By You 02](https://i.blogs.es/566ea5/life-by-you-02/450_1000.webp)
However, a couple of months ago it was reported that was delayed indefinitely until this moment in which it has been completely canceled. This is how the CEO of Paradox Interactive has spoken about this fact.
A few weeks ago, we decided to postpone the Early Access release to re-evaluate Life by You, as we still felt the game was missing some key areas. Although a time extension was an option, once we paused to take a broader view of the game, it became clear to us that the path to a release we were confident in was too long and uncertain. This isn't to say that the game hasn't shown promising qualities; Life by You has a number of strengths and the hard work of a dedicated team who focused on realizing them. However, when we reached a point where we believed that more time would not get us close enough to a version we would be satisfied with, then we felt it was best to stop. Obviously, this is difficult and disappointing for everyone who put their time and enthusiasm into this project, especially when our decision comes so late in the process.
At the end of the day, our job is to release games that are fun, interesting, and challenging for our players, and all of our decisions should be made with that purpose in mind. When we do well, we earn our salary. So how do we make sure we don't meet again at this point? Honestly, there are no real guarantees. Games are hard to get right and we will definitely make mistakes that, as we progress, always become painfully obvious in retrospect, but they shouldn't reach this kind of magnitude anyway. We have to take a hard look at what brought us here and see what changes we need to make to be better. In the end, our mission remains the same and we will continue to take all necessary steps to achieve just that.
If I had moved on, Life by You It would have become available for PC through Steam and the Epic Games Store and would have left us with a large open world that could have been explored and customized to each individual's taste. Now it only remains to be seen if Paradox Interactive keeps its word of working on projects with higher quality and in which the pertinent decisions are made so that this same situation is not repeated.
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