Yesterday, Paradox Interactive announced that it was officially cancelling Life by You, a new life simulation game that was scheduled to hit early access this year. The game had been delayed several times, with an indefinite delay announced last month before the eventual cancellation. At the time, many feared that Paradox Tectonic, the studio behind the project, would be shut down soon after because it was the only project the team had on the books. Sadly, Paradox announced earlier today that Tectonic is shutting down. Life by You was meant to be its debut game, so this closure stings even more, especially with how excited players were to jump into The Sims competitor.
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The statement from Paradox reads, “This is difficult and drastic news for our colleagues at Tectonic, who’ve worked hard on Life by You‘s early access release. Sadly, with cancellation of their sole project, we have to take the tough decision to close down the studio. We are deeply grateful for their hard work in trying to take Paradox into a new genre.”
Of course, at this point, the hope is that the developers who lost their jobs with the closure can quickly find work. Tectonic had 24 employees before being shuttered ย Fortunately, players were excited about Life by You, so their work hasn’t gone unnoticed by the life simulator community. Hopefully, the same is true for other studios hoping to bring in quality developers. Paradox did not share any further details beyond the statement above, so we don’t know if any of the employees are being moved to other studios within Paradox, but this is yet another cog in a worrying trend of studio closures that has been an unfortunate ongoing development for the last several months.
Fans hoping for a new game to challenge The Sims 4 will have to wait a bit longer. There are a few other indie projects in the works, but those games won’t be out until the end of 2024 at the earliest. Paravlives is scheduled to hit early access in 2025 and is being developed by solo dev Alex Massรฉ. Meanwhile, Krafton’s inZOI is currently scheduled for “late 2024,” though that date could easily move around. On top of that, we know that Electronic Arts is working on the next mainline game in The Sims franchise. However, we don’t have a release window for that project yet and there haven’t been many signs that it’ll be announced any time soon.
