It was already disappointing to hear that Sims competitor Life by You had been indefinitely delayed, but it seemed the behind-the-scenes situation was grimmer than we thought. Earlier this week, Paradox Interactive announced it had not only cancelled the game, but had shut down developer Paradox Tectonic too. In the wake of this, though, one member of the now defunct studio has claimed that progress on the game was going much better than it sounded.
As spotted by PC Gamer, one Willem Delventhal took to LinkedIn to say that the team at Paradox Tectonic were doing “extremely well” ahead of Life by You‘s planned early access launch on June 4. After having already been delayed once before, the game was suddenly put on an indefinite hiatus, followed by the aforementioned cancellation.
“I cannot share specific numbers, but I can say that we had an internal metric we were aiming for that had been approved, and that we exceeded that number by a significant portion,” wrote Delventhal. He added that they “got a thumbs up a few weeks before launch,” which makes it sound like the delay was as much of a surprise to the team as it was to fans waiting to play Life by You.
By comparison, Paradox Interactive CEO Fredrik Wester, when explaining the reasons for the cancellation, had said Life by You would not be able to meet the company’s expectations and that “a version that we’d be satisfied with is too far away.” This doesn’t match up with what Delventhal is alleging. By his account, everything was going incredibly smoothly, especially if they were exceeding internal targets, yet Paradox pulled the plug anyway. Deventhal has also claimed he and his team were never told why their studio was closing: “Instead we spent a month in purgatory, and did everything we could to prove to them we were worth launching, including things like finding potential buyers or suggesting cutting ties and going indie. We heard virtually nothing back.”
It must be stressed that Delventhal’s comments do not represent the rest of Paradox Tectonic; he is only speaking for himself, and has refrained from sharing his own theories on why the project was ultimately canned. However, he did add, “This industry has become a place in which you can deliver more than expected, have AA money behind you, and still have the rug pulled two weeks before launch.”
The games industry is most certainly in a rocky state; in fact, calling it rocky is a massive understatement. After all, a distressing number of people have been laid off this year, and that number has only increased thanks to the closure of Paradox Tectonic.
