Life by You Team Spent ‘A Month in Purgatory’ Before Studio Closure, Laid-Off Paradox Dev Says
A now laid-off developer at Paradox has alleged the team behind its The Sims competitor spent “a month in purgatory” before the studio closed down.
Game designer Willem Delventhal took to LinkedIn to say they were “devastated” at the cancellation of Life by You, calling recent events “a real s**t show.” Paradox declined to comment when contacted by IGN.
Swedish games company Paradox, best known for Crusader Kings, Cities Skylines, and Stellaris, shut down Berkeley, California-based Tectonic just hours after canceling Life by You in a move that affected the studio’s 24 staff.
“This is difficult and drastic news for our colleagues at Tectonic, who’ve worked hard on Life by You’s Early Access release,” Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive, said.
“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.”
Life by You, which Tectonic had worked on since 2019, initially set an early access release date for September 2023, but it was delayed to May 2024 before Paradox announced an additional delay to June 4. Two weeks before June 4, Paradox delayed the game indefinitely.
Delventhal alleged Paradox told Tectonic Life by You wouldn’t launch just two weeks before the June 4 release date, and staff only found out they’d lost their jobs when the studio closure was publicly announced this week. Delventhal said Tectonic tried to save Life by You by finding potential buyers or even going indie, but to no avail.
“I've known for some time that we might be getting shut down,” Delventhal said. “We were actively working on a hyper-moddable life sim called Life By You. An indie answer to the aging IP that is the Sims but instead focussed heavily on UGC.
“And as far as it goes, we were doing extremely well.
“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
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