The Cities Skylines Paradox: how the sequel stumbled

Summary

The Cities Skyline ParadoxNov 18, 2025 Why the sequel stumbledand how a new studio might save it Announcement: “An Update on Cities: Skylines II” (Paradox Interactive).In mid-November 2025 Paradox Interactive and its long-time partner Colossal Order announced a quiet but monumental shift. After more than fifteen years together, the companies would “pursue independent paths”. The Cities: Skylines franchise – Paradox’s flagship city-building series – would be handed to Iceflake Studios, an internal Finnish team. Colossal Order (CO) would finish one last “Bike Patch” and an asset-editing beta, then move on to other projects. The announcement formalised a split that players and critics had anticipated for months. Cities: Skylines II (CS2) had launched in October 2023 to technical issues, design missteps and a conspicuous lack of mod support. A year later, many of those problems persisted, and Paradox’s patience wore thin. In this article I attempt to disentangle the facts of that breakup, to understand why CO floundered, why Iceflake has been given the keys, and whether the sequel’s underlying issues can realistically be fixed. A brief history of the series Cities: Skylines (2015) emerged from the rubble of Maxis’ SimCity reboot, combining approachable city-planning mechanics with modding openness. Developed by the Helsinki-based Colossal Order and published by Paradox Interactive, CS1 quickly became the dominant city builder. Its success spawned dozens of expansions and thousands of user-made mods via Steam Workshop. CO – a studio of around thirty people – became a darling of the simulation genre. Technical sources: Launch performance warning (GameSpot); CS2 performance analysis (Paavo Huhtala).In 2023 CO attempted to leap ahead with a sequel. Built in Unity’s High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) and promising per-citizen simulation, a dynamic economy and cross-platform modding, CS2 launched on PC in October 2023. Even before release, Paradox warned that performance ...