Cities Skylines II feature

Cities Skylines 2 may release with major performance issues


Colossal Order has issued a statement, claiming that Cities Skylines 2 may release with major performance issues. Cities Skylines 2 will release on October 24th and as Colossal Order stated, it was not able to achieve the performance benchmark it was targeting.

As Colossal Order stated:

“Cities: Skylines II is a next-gen title, and naturally, it demands certain hardware requirements. With that said, while our team has worked tirelessly to deliver the best experience possible, we have not achieved the benchmark we targeted.

In light of this, we still think for the long-term of the project, releasing now is the best way forward. We are proud of the unique gameplay and features in Cities: Skylines II, and we genuinely believe that it offers a great experience that you will enjoy.

We will continually improve the game over the coming months, but we also want to manage expectations on performance for the coming release.”

Basically, Colossal Order has admitted that Cities Skylines 2 may be broken at launch. And, despite that, the team will go ahead and release the game.

I seriously can’t believe that statement about releasing the game in its current unpolished state. If you are to release an unpolished game, then adjust its price. Instead of asking for $50, you should be charging for $30. And then, when the game receives all of its optimization tweaks and improvements, you may start charging for its full price. As simple as that.

Let’s also not forget that in September 2023, Paradox and Colossal Order raised the game’s official PC system requirements. So yeah, things are not looking particularly well for this upcoming city-building game.

For those wondering, Cities Skylines 2 is still using the Unity Engine. So no, the team did not switch to a custom engine or to Unreal Engine 5.

Lastly, Colossal Order will introduce the Paradox Mods as the new mods platform for Cities: Skylines II. And no, the game will not have support for Steam Workshop.

We’ll be sure to test Cities Skylines II when it comes out and share our initial PC performance impressions, so stay tuned for more!