Last week, Cities: Skylines 2 developer Colossal Order patched out an in-game radio advert it had deemed offensive. Now, the boss of the developer has called into question some of the reaction from the community.
Colossal Order used a hotfix to remove the ‘Spasm Electronics’ advertisement from the in-game radio stations after members of the community took issue with its sound effects, which they argued were similar to the sound a person makes when experiencing a seizure.
It’s fair to say that fans of the recently released city-builder had opinions about the decision, but for CEO of Colossal Order Mariina Hallikainen some of the reaction went a bit too far. In a post on Steam, Hallikainen called on players to stop attacking other members of the community, and even the developers themselves, over the pulled ad.
“We want Cities: Skylines 2 to be welcoming to all, so we decided to remove said radio ad,” Hallikainen said. “I was, however, surprised by the tone of the discussion. The best part of the Cities: Skylines community has been how helpful and kind its members are to each other, and we hope to see that continue with Cities: Skylines 2.
“I would like everyone to keep that in mind when you join community discussions. I would urge everyone to leave constructive criticism and remember that if there’s an issue with the game it’s not appropriate to attack a fellow community member or single out a developer or a partner of Colossal Order. We are reading all the feedback and we are more inclined to take polite feedback (including criticism) back to the dev team. You can be a part of a positive community if you so choose.”
Elsewhere, Hallikainen said Colossal Order was looking into stamping out bugs in the game’s garbage feature, with a particular focus on balance.
Cities Skylines 2’s next patch will also improve stray dogs, which are perhaps a tad too prevalent in-game. “The amount of them is fixed so that we don’t end up with an insane number of abandoned packs of dogs all over the city,” Hallikainen explained. “Newlyweds should just welcome their partner’s dogs to the family and not leave them behind. Plans to fix this issue caused immediate debate if we should turn this bug into a feature. I for one would absolutely welcome the idea of an animal shelter DLC with a bunch of policies and all sorts of animals needing rescue in the city!”
Perhaps more importantly, Hallikainen vowed not to release new paid DLC for Cities Skylines 2 until the developer has sorted out the game’s outstanding performance issues “to our standards”.
“As a small team, we must focus on the task at hand to avoid spreading too thin,” Hallikainen said, before promising to go through suggestions from players, such as the addition of quality-of-life improvements that were in the original game but were missed in the sequel “due to priorities and time constraints”.
“My pledge to you is that Colossal Order will keep working on Cities: Skylines 2 so it will reach its full potential,” Hallikainen said.
In the month preceding the launch of Cities: Skylines 2 Paradox announced the Xbox Series X|S and PS5 versions of the game were delayed to spring 2024 in order to allow the developers more time to match “quality and performance across all platforms."
The minimum and recommended PC specs were also raised significantly to account for the game’s “next-generation” features, and to allow for “a better player experience”. In a subsequent joint statement developer Colossal Order and publisher Paradox admitted they had “not achieved the benchmark” targeted for launch performance on PC, but stuck to the planned release date anyway.
Despite the warning, Cities: Skylines 2 surpassed 100,000 concurrent players on Steam on launch day as it soared to the top of the storefront’s best-sellers chart. However, a great many of these players were left frustrated by the game’s foreshadowed poor performance, along with a number of bugs, which resulted in a ‘mixed’ user score that at the time of writing has the city builder sitting on a 56% positive rating.
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.
