Cities: Skylines 2 Beach Properties DLC to be refunded and made free

Colossal Order / Paradox Interactive

Colossal Order is really having a rough time: After the disastrous launch of Cities: Skylines 2, which was plagued by technical issues and performance problems, the developers made the same mistake once again and published the Beach Properties DLC for the game without the necessary checks to ensure that it was in a good state.

“We asked for your patience and support, and you’ve shown those. In return, we let you down,” CEO Mariina Hallikainen summed it up in a statement. “We thought we could make up for the shortcomings of the game in a timeframe that was unrealistic, and rushed out a DLC that should not have been published in its current form. For all this, we are truly sorry. When we’ve made statements like this one before, it’s included a pledge to keep making improvements, and while we are working on these updates, they haven’t happened at a speed or magnitude that is acceptable, and it pains us that we've now lost the trust of many of you. We want to do better.”

As a first step to make good on that promise, everyone who bought the Beach Properties DLC will get a refund and the DLC will be converted into a free update for all owners of the game. Since the DLC was part of the Ultimate Edition for Cities: Skylines 2, owners of this version of the game will receive additional DLC coming in the future without further cost as compensation.

Planned DLC from the Cities: Skylines 2 roadmap will be pushed into 2025 so that the team can fully focus on delivering technical fixes for the game.

In addition, a community council will be founded to ensure that feedback can be delivered in a more direct way to the developers and they tackle problems in the right order. Members of the council will also get full transparency on development in order to inform the community about the state of things.

The release of Cities: Skylines 2 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S will be delayed further. Originally planned for Spring 2024, it looks like it will now come in October 2024 at the earliest.

“We have been struggling to get Cities: Skylines II to the necessary level of optimization for a console release, but are now hopeful that an upcoming build delivery in April will demonstrate sufficient progress for us to progress with a release candidate, and then a release build targeted for October. Before we have seen and evaluated the progress made in these builds however, we will not be able to confirm the release date, and even then, some uncertainty always remains,” Hallikainen wrote.