Do you remember Life By You? It was a social simulation and strategy video game in the style of The Sims 4 that aimed to compete with Electronic Arts for the title of the best game in the genre. A few days before its release in early access, an indefinite delay was announced, and days later Paradox officially announced that Life By You had been canceled, without disclosing the reasons behind it. The company defined it as a failure, and now we know some of the reasons for the cancellation.
Both the creative director, Henrik Fåhraeus, and the CEO, Mattias Lilja, have given an interview to the publication Eurogamer where they explain the reasons why Life By You was canceled. “We had a lot of trust in the developers. We thought that maybe another expansion would take us where we wanted to go, and in the end, we realized that everything would go worse if we continued, so we had to stop,” said the Paradox executive.
Why was Life By You canceled?
Fåhraeus also mentioned that they detected “many flaws,” but they didn’t have time to fix them despite “seeing them individually.” “We were approaching the early access trying to focus on fixing each individual problem,” he said (via Gamesradar). However, the company realized that “it was too late” and that there was “not a single thing that could really compete viably in terms of gameplay.”
Nevertheless, one could think that the early access was a way to improve Life By You over time, but even in early access, it was practically unplayable, which is why it was indefinitely delayed. “I think that an early access game has to be, very, very polished and fun, at least in terms of what’s there. Many things can be missing in the final game and have very little content. But it has to be a really good experience and I don’t think this can be in the near future,” he pointed out in Game File.
While there are images of Life By You that demonstrate its potential, it seems that reality was different after its troubled development. “I also don’t believe that it was clearly better than The Sims 4 in any of its main areas,” he concludes.
In 3DJuegos | Forget about The Sims 5. EA surprises and states that their plan is to continue expanding The Sims 4 with updates and packs
In 3DJuegos | “They are the most complex RPGs ever written.” Believe it or not, it is more difficult to make a game like The Sims than the upcoming Baldur’s Gate 4
