Life By You, Paradox Interactive’s potential The Sims 4 competitor, has been canceled. Paradox Interactive deputy CEO Mattias Lilja announced the game’s cancellation in a post on the publisher’s forum. “Sadly, we’ve decided to cancel the release of our long-awaited life sim Life by You,” Lilja wrote. “This was an incredibly difficult call to make and is a clear failure on Paradox’s part to meet both our own and the community’s expectations.”
Life By You was last scheduled for its early access release on June 4, but Paradox delayed the game indefinitely on May 20. The May delay was the third time the early access release was pushed back — it was first intended for September 2023, March 5, then June 4. Lilja said the game had “incremental improvements” with each delay, but that the road to release was “far too long and uncertain.” Here’s Lilja on the delay:
A few weeks back, we decided to hold off on an Early Access release in order to re-evaluate Life by You, as we still felt that the game was lacking in some key areas. Though a time extension was an option, once we took that pause to get a wider view of the game, it became clear to us that the road leading to a release that we felt confident about was far too long and uncertain. This is not to say the game has not shown any promising qualities; Life by You had a number of strengths and the hard work of a dedicated team that went into realizing them. However, when we come to a point where we believe that more time will not get us close enough to a version we would be satisfied with, then we believe it is better to stop. This is obviously tough and disappointing for everyone who poured their time and enthusiasm into this project, especially when our decision comes so late in the process.
At the end of the day, our job is to release games that are fun, interesting, and challenging for our players, and our every decision should be taken with that purpose in mind. When we get that right, we earn our pay. So, how do we ensure we don’t find ourselves here again? Honestly, there are no real guarantees. Games are difficult to get right, and we’ll definitely make mistakes, which, as these things go, always become painfully apparent in hindsight, but still shouldn’t reach this kind of magnitude regardless. We have to take a long and hard look at what led us here and see what changes we have to make to become better. In the end, our mission remains the same, and we’ll continue to take whatever steps we need to do just that.
In a news release published on the Paradox Interactive website, CEO Fredik Wester said a version of Life By You that met the publisher’s expectations was “too far away.” Paradox Interactive is expecting its second quarter financial results to be “negatively impacted” by the game’s write-down of development costs — adding to a poor performance with recent releases, according to Wester.
“We’ve performed poorly in recent releases,” Wester said. “Even though we now start new projects in a different manner, it is clear that we must make further changes so that quality is more consistent and the promises we make to our players are met. We have to evaluate how we manage projects and how we organize, for we will and must get better. We have a very solid financial position and a strong core game portfolio, which keeps us confident about our future.”
Paradox announced Paradox Tectonic, the studio tasked with developing Life By You, in 2019. Led by former Sims lead and Second Life creator Linden Labs CEO Rod Humble, Paradox Tectonic officially announced Life By You in 2023. Life By You was expected to stand out from the crowded life sim genre with deeper roleplaying elements. With the cancellation of Life By You, that genre just got a little less crowded — but there’s still Paralives, inZOI, Project Rene (aka The Sims 5) and an unnamed life simulator from Midsummer Studios.
