Prison Architect 2 developer Double Eleven and publisher Paradox Interactive are parting ways after failing to come to a new commercial agreement for a continued partnership. Prison Architect 2 is still set to release later this year in September, with new developer Kokku taking over.
Double Eleven has been working on the Prison Architect games for the past nine years, first to produce a console version of the game, and then for all versions after Paradox acquired the rights to the popular prison management game from original creators Introversion Software in 2019. The last few years the company has shifted focus to creating Prison Architect 2, but Double Eleven will not be supporting the game post-launch.
While there is generally a bittersweet and warm tone to the statements being made by all parties – Paradox thanking Double Eleven for their efforts, Double Eleven’s Gaz talking about the studio’s excitement for the future and trust in Kokku to continue their work – there is also a very plain statement of fact.
“With the sequel passing certification on all platforms, the contract was fulfilled. However, we could not find a commercial agreement that worked for both parties moving forward and mutually agreed to part ways.”
It seems that the ship sailed quite a while ago, with Kokku being brought in to assist Double Eleven around the time of Gamescom last year, and then taking over development fully in January of this year. This would have been around the time of the game’s announcement, so Paradox has sat on this information for quite some time – perhaps because of evaluating this new working relationship and deciding to delay the game first to May, and then to September.
The additional four months is all about trying to optimise the game as much as possible. Since last month, Prison Architect 2 has been “certified” and “ready to release” on all platforms, but Paradox and Kokku felt that they could do better with optimising the game for lower-end hardware and cutting out more edge case crashes – rather prescient given the difficulties that Cities: Skylines 2 is currently enduring.
Prison Architect 2 will step into the third dimension with everything that this entails. You can now build a prison across multiple floors with more elaborate structures, and with building tools designed to accommodate this feat. Within that space, you’ve then got myriad management tools to define daily schedules for inmates, policies for how to handle them, and more.
While Double Eleven had a huge role in making this leap and setting out the future plans for the game’s post-release growth, it’s now up to Kokku to deliver on that potential.
