Cities Skylines 2 developer Colossal Order says it decided to stick to the city builder's original launch date despite the possibility of a "potential kicking" owing to performance issues. The Cities Skylines 2 creator says it has identified a variety of problems and is working to resolve them, but that staying true to the game's original launch date "wasn't honestly tough." Despite the technical problems outlined in our own review of Cities Skylines 2, Colossal Order says the game is "ready enough to be released."
The Cities Skylines 2, explains why it's decided to stay true to the original launch date, while also outlining patches, fixes, and CS2's long-term plans.
"The current performance issues that are being talked about are not caused by the core of the game or its architecture and we are already working on improving that situation," Colossal Order says. "We know that we keep working on the title and are committed to improving the performances fast so we wanted to respect the announced release date and allow people to start playing the game."
"It wasn't honestly that tough knowing we will stick to the current release date on PC despite the potential kicking because we have already seen a lot of people having a lot of fun playing the game, and not all of them with the latest-gen hardware," Colossal Order says. "The game is ready enough to be released and we are ready to move on from CS1."
Colossal Order explains that "the performance target [for Cities Skylines 2] is to run at steady 30fps minimum (not 60 or more)." The developer also says that an initial, post-release patch is "in the works" but that "most likely it won't be day one, but a bit later." The patch is apparently undergoing testing and will aim to improve performance.
"We will continue to develop and Cities Skylines 2 for years to come, just like we did for the original," Colossal Order says. "Tomorrow [CS2's release date, at the time of Colossal Order's writing] is just the beginning." The developer also explains how many of the game's technical issues – including freezes, loading times, and problems relating to levels of detail and textures – are "not caused by the core of the game or its architecture." CO says it is already working on improving these issues.
"We have identified some issues recently due to certain hardware setups that yielded unexpected results," Colossal Order says. "Following those discoveries we're working on the following improvements: Removing stutters, generally caused by some synchronization condition in the simulation and can greatly vary from one U to another, as well as how your city is built; optimizing and balancing GPU performances by reducing the amount of vertices processed per frame; [and] pushing any U optimizations that are not already done that we come across in this process."
Writing during a Reddit 'Ask Me Anything,' Colossal Order also jokingly responds about a potential Cities Skylines 3. "Can't we just improve Cities Skylines 2?" the developer says. "Do we really need a third installment? If we do, it will probably be in about ten years from now."
With the release date upon us, check out the complete Cities Skylines 2 mods, to tweak and improve the game even further.