Colossal Order, the developer of the city-building game Cities: Skylines 2, has admitted that the game will be released with known performance issues still present. Cities: Skylines 2 is still set to release on October 24, 2023, despite some fans' concerns and criticism.
Following the recent increase in Cities: Skylines 2's minimum and recommended specification, both Colossal Order and publisher Paradox released a joint statement to address the issue.
Within this statement, Colossal Order states that "[their] team has worked tirelessly to deliver the best experience possible". However, the game has "not achieved the benchmark [they] targeted", and as the game is a next-gen title, it "demands certain hardware requirements".
Despite this, there are no plans to delay the game. Colossal Order promises that the game "offers a great experience" that players will still enjoy, and as such, doesn't seem too concerned at the prospects of many people being able to experience the game to its full potential. Indeed, "Colossal Order and Paradox are 100% aware Cities: Skylines 2 requires high-end hardware for high-end performance".
Moreover, in an FAQ, Colossal Order reaffirmed that some PC players will experience performance issues, acknowledging that "some will experience issues, some will not". The developers also highlighted how players with performance issues may be able to get the game running more smoothly by using lower graphics settings, which many fans will find to be a dissatisfying solution.
This isn't the first bump in the road for Cities: Skylines 2's development. Only in September, the console versions of the game were pushed back to 2024 for both Xbox and PlayStation 5. Additionally, there's also been the aforementioned hike in minimum and recommended specs for PC.
If you've been thinking about upgrading your PC for a while and have been looking forward to Cities: Skylines 2, now might be the time to make the leap. With the PC recommended spec GPU being an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, the majority of PCs will likely struggle to run the game very far above the minimum graphics settings.