The Cities: Skylines 2 Economy 2.0 update is on the way

Cities: Skylines 2 ended up falling flat on its face on day one, but that’s not to say the game won’t be fixed in due time, thankfully. Following a series of prior fixes, the Colossal Order has now outlined the upcoming Economy 2.0 rework, and it’s a hoot.

Or, at least, it should be a hoot if it all pans out properly. As per Colossal Order’s latest developer blog, the Economy 2.0 system rework is supposed to be a complete and comprehensive rebalance of how the game handles its monetary progression.

“Our goal with Economy 2.0 was to make the systems more straightforward and responsive, so you can make more meaningful choices and have more control over the various gameplay aspects,” read the Colossal Order blog. “This means fewer safeguards and automated systems that work invisibly under the surface and an increased level of challenge.”

Good stuff so far, but what are the specifics?

Economy 2.0 update for Cities: Skylines 2 is coming soon

Generally speaking, Cities: Skylines 2‘s Economy 2.0 is supposed to do all of the following (and then some):

• Outright remove all Government Subsidies
• Make the ‘Importing City Services’ feature fully optional, with a fee when toggled on.
• Meaningfully increase the upkeep costs of all city services.
• Improve the demand calculations of your cities and communities.
• Introduce new rent and household spending calculations, allowing citizens to live in Low Density Residential areas.
• Rebalance the production chain to make taxed income more reasonable, in the grand scheme of things.

It’s curious, perhaps, that Colossal Order aims to simply take Government Subsidies out of the game. The feature is, in fact, a thing in the real world, so taking it out of the equation instead of attempting to retrofit it into something that makes sense is a tad strange. Yet, it should be better than the Economy 1.0 version, where Subsidies could easily remove the need to worry about money entirely.

A potential red flag, if you wish to take it that way, is that Colossal Order also noted that “[they] still aim for the game to be playable without paying too much attention to where and how money and resources flow in the city so new players have a chance to succeed, while still leaving room for experienced players to benefit from optimizing their city.” There’s a multitude of ways we could understand this statement, but for the time being, I do recommend keeping a pinch of salt at hand.

Economy 2.0 won’t fix all of Cities: Skylines 2‘s problems, of course, but it should serve as a solid baseline for Colossal Order to build upon (har har, I know) in the future. It’s obviously less than ideal, given the launch-day state of the game, but I’m personally just thrilled that the game isn’t going to suffer the same fate as Kerbal Space Program 2 did. It’s the little things.