Having already faced several delays ahead of a planned Early Access release, Paradox Interactive has now delayed their The Sims rival Life By You indefinitely.
Where previous delays had been accompanied by a video, this latest delay has been done with a simple statement on the Paradox Interactive website:
After much consideration, we regret to announce that we have decided to retract Life by You’s Early Access release date, previously set for June 4th. This was not an easy decision, especially since we understand the anticipation and excitement that many players have for the game. However, we believe that additional development time is needed.
While we would have preferred to commit to a new release window, we believe it is more prudent to hold off while we plan ahead, rather than committing to a new date that we cannot be certain to meet.
We will provide more information as soon as possible, until then we want to sincerely thank you for your continued support and patience.
Mattias Lilja, Deputy CEO of Paradox Interactive
Developed by Paradox Tectonic, a team led by The Sims veteran Rod Humble, Life By You is an ambitious attempt to take on the life sim juggernaut that is The Sims.
Life By You would naturally cover all of the main bases of the genre, but Paradox Tectonic planned to go even further by adding a far deeper degree of customisation and control for the player. You’ll be able to build your person’s home, with ingrained customisation for colour palettes and designs, and then guide your humans through life, through careers, love and more. You’ll be able to take direct control of people (any person in the world) and move them in the world, and be able to engage in contextually generated conversations with other people. Pretty much all of this can then be modded, from creating custom styles to writing your own dialogue, create events, items, shops, careers, skills, traits and more.
It’s very ambitious in that regard, and seems that Paradox Tectonic need longer to make all of this hang together. Early Access releases were once synonymous with very early builds of games that were severely lacking in features, but as time has gone by, expectations for what an Early Access release offers have grown – not least when it’s a fairly large publisher using this business model. With the quality of Paradox’s game launches currently very much in the spotlight, it makes sene to hold off until Life By You and meet as many expectations as possible.
Source: Paradox
