Skylines

Cities: Skylines 2 players are facing yet another delay for the beleaguered city builder’s first major DLC expansion, with publisher Paradox Interactive having announced a new release window of “Q4” this year – closing in on two years after it was originally due to launch.

Cities: Skylines 2’s troubles are well documented; the city builder sequel got off a disastrous start in 2023, forcing developer Colossal Order to reprioritise its development efforts amid significant criticism of the game’s performance. Initially, the studio had planned to release its first DLC – the Beach Properties Asset Pack – shortly after launch, but it was delayed into the following year, while all other announced DLC (the Urban Promenades and Modern Architecture Creator Packs, and the Bridges & Ports expansion) shifted from Q1 2024 to Q2.

Unfortunately, the Beach Properties’ eventual arrival did little to improve the community’s goodwill; it was slammed by players for its high price and lacklustre content, leading Colossal Order to announced an ‘indefinite’ delay for all future paid DLC. Bridges & Ports was moved into 2025 as a result, but a further delay was announced last September, while Colossal Order focused its efforts on completing what it called the “crucial” assets editor.

In the months since, Colossal Order has continued to make improvements to the base game and launched some free “region” DLC. But that “crucial” assets editor remains unreleased, and now the studio has opted to delay Bridges & Ports yet again, moving it out of Q2 this year into Q4. “We’ve spent the last five months working hard on the Bridges & Ports DLC, and towards our upcoming expected release,” the studio wrote in a message shared on the Paradox forum. “After reviewing the content ourselves and sharing it with our early access group, we’ve received consistent feedback: the bridges are super exciting, and the port works well, but there are aspects of the expansion that are not as polished as they could be.”

“That left us with a difficult choice,” it continued, “delay the release once again to add more depth, or release it as-is, knowing players may feel it falls short. We believe the current content is enjoyable, but we’re not blind to what’s missing, and to bring it to the level you deserve, we need more time… We’re assessing feedback from our early access group and mapping out what we want to improve when the expansion launches – which we are now expecting in Q4 of this year. This is still a beautiful expansion, and we’re excited about what it will add to your city. We just want to ensure it adds enough to meet your deservedly high expectations.”

Cities: Skylines 2 players won’t, however, be left waiting for new content until the end of this year. Colossal Order has elected to release the free update it was originally intending to ship alongside Bridges & Ports on 11th June, offering “a bit of content that gives a slight sneak peek of what is to come in the expansion”. It’ll include two new bridges, three leisure piers, and three quays, with more details available in today’s forum post.

As for Cities: Skylines 2’s much-delayed console port, there’s still no hint as to when that might arrive. It was originally due to launch alongside the PC version back in October 2023, but has remained in limbo since then, with Colossal Order admitting it has struggled to overcome “hardware limitations” impacting performance on Xbox Series X/S and PS5. Back in March, it warned, “We will not have a release before summer”, but there’s been no update since then.

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