Colossal Order Warns of Poor Performance With Cities Skylines II With Upcoming Release

Colossal Order are the developers behind Cities Skylines II which is releasing very soon on October 26th however as many recently launched games, it may see itself launching into a firepit.

Cities Skylines II Performance Statement

Yesterday the developers released a statement on modding and performance for Cities Skylines II but I’ll be focusing on the second half of this statement. The team behind the game had noticed some concerns around the performance of the game, especially following the raised system requirements up to an RTX 3080 for just 1080p which was highly concerning.

Colossal Order stated “Cities: Skylines II is a next-gen title, and naturally, it demands certain hardware requirements. With that said, while our team has worked tirelessly to deliver the best experience possible, we have not achieved the benchmark we targeted.” despite this, they will still go ahead to release the game as they genuinely believe that it will offer a great experience that fans will enjoy.

The honesty about the state of the game is quite refreshing to see, but this without a doubt will have an effect on the early sales, especially with the game costing £41.99. Performance wasn’t great on the first game and performance isn’t really a major issue with a city builder, but PC gamers do want a smooth 60 FPS most of the time. This announcement I do think will push away some people from buying on launch due to having lower-end systems and instead will wait until a sale or until a patch is released for the poor performance.

In my opinion, the game should be delayed to fix these issues, the same way that the console release has been delayed, releasing a game with a AAA price tag that is unfinished should not be happening and we shouldn’t be funding this behaviour.

No More Steam Workshop?

This announcement also covered modding and most notably the lack of a Steam Workshop with a move to Paradox Modding instead. Personally, I can’t forge an opinion until I get some hands-on experience with Paradox Modding. The team claims this will allow for more cross-platform mod support which is good news for console players, it does also mean they have more control over mods which could be a negative thing compared to the Steam workshop.

Cities Skylines Launches October 26th on Steam for £41.99 or £74.99 for the Ultimate Edition which includes the Expansion Pass, once again Colossal Order going overboard with the DLC’s before the game has even launched.