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As Cities: Skyline 2 continues its attempts to recover from last year’s disastrous launch, Paradox Interactive has announced and released a fresh batch of paid DLC for the original Cities: Skylines, some 18 months after delivering what was supposed to be its final major update.
Paradox concluded Cities: Skylines 1’s release roadmap in May last year with the launch of its final mini-expansion, Hotels & Retreats. At the time, it said developer Colossal Order would continue general support through to the end of 2023 as it shifted its focus to Cities: Skylines 2.
But Cities: Skylines 2’s launch went poorly, resulting in multiple delays to Paradox’s post-launch DLC plans while Colossal Order continued to improve the base game. An early attempt to foist DLC on the Cities: Skylines 2 player base was so badly received, Paradox vowed to postpone all future paid DLC “indefinitely”. Then, in September, it announced further DLC delays so Colossal Order could complete work on a “crucial” assets editor.
And now, amid a string of other major misfires for Paradox, the publisher has decided to return to a well most assumed had finally run dry. 18 months after wrapping up support for Cities: Skylines 1, it’s launched three new paid DLC packs for the game, all themed around mountain peaks and alpine terrain. There’s the Mountain Village Pack and Map Pack 3, both part of Cities: Skylines’ Content Creator range, plus the Radio Station Alpine Tunes music pack.
“This content has been in the works for some time as we know many of you still love building and expanding your cities in the original Cities: Skylines,” Paradox wrote in its DLC announcement. “No resources were diverted from Cities: Skylines 2 for this,” it continued, noting the new DLC has been created in partnership with developer Tantalus. “Our friends at Colossal Order remain fully focused on developing and improving Cities: Skylines 2.”
All three new Cities: Skylines 1 DLC releases are available now on PC, and arrive ahead of eight free community created region packs inspired by the architecture of iconic cities around the world that’ll launch for Cities: Skylines 2 starting next week.
All this comes at a challenging time for Paradox, which has faced a string of high-profile set-backs over the last few years. Alongside Cities: Skylines 2’s disastrous launch, Prison Architect 2 has now been delayed indefinitely after Paradox split with developer Double Eleven earlier this year, while Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 (which was almost cancelled before The Chinese Room took over its troubled development) recently saw its release pushed back from “late 2024” into 2025. That’s on top of Paradox’s decision to cancel promising life sim Life By You in June, and the commercial failure of last year’s The Lamplighters’ League, which resulted in Paradox parting ways with developer Harebrained Schemes.
Speaking to Eurogamer about the company’s troubles earlier this year, Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester admitted, “It is clear that we have made the wrong calls in several projects, especially outside of our core, and this must change.”