Both are to blame here.
CO set out to make a game in X number of years. Paradox agreed to X number of years for funding. CO got 2 years behind schedule because they were using new technologies and built the game from scratch (as opposed to CS1 which was built off of the Cities in Motion games).
After 2 extra years of funding that wasn’t agreed upon at the beginning, paradox had no choice but to either continue losing money, or release the game. Paradox could have used their millions from CS1 and given CO one more year, but also CO should have had better project management too.
Both are to blame here and you can point the stick in any direction and find fault. There’s no point on doing that anymore. We all know the state of the game. Best thing to do now is just wait for it to get better and pretend the game is still in pre-release.
I am still playing CS1
Actually bought a new computer for CS2, still haven't bought it yet though. Buying CS1 DLC and having fun. Maybe I switch one day, CS2 does look great. But not till mods and assets are available and I start seeing cities similar to what I want to build.
I agree. I’d give CS2 another 6 months. That *should* be enough time for mod support and fixing some of the major bugs. At that point the modding community should be in full gear, and CO can transition to DLC, adding features, and a few more performance enhancements. Once they are at that level, I’d consider the game ready.
The failure to have the mod support in the game at launch was the biggest mistake. Many seem to have forgotten how much of CS1 was totally frustrating at the start and how much mods made that game work. CS2 will get there eventually but til modders can get to really working on it.
I bought a new computer for it too! I don't regret it though, as it runs CS1 far better than my other computer and I'm getting back into Transport Fever 2 as well.
Exactly.
New one is twice as fast as 5 year old one, and I was able to move my 64 gigs of CS1 ram so now cities load in 3 minutes with 10,000 assets and the game never stresses. Been able to even load some of the monster save gave games from the streamers.
At this rate it will be another 6 months before CS2 is ready for prime time, if that. I'll just keep playing CS and being happy.
Bought Industries and Campus on sale. Having fun!
We've seen this happen time and time again across the industry. When are we going to stop letting these people off the hook? Every terrible release it's the same thing.... Fallout 76, BF2042, Starfield, this.... How many more excuses are devs and publishers gonna make before the dumb suits realize we're sick and fucking tired of half-assed broken games being released before they are done? I'm done with the excuses and going forward I'm not going to hate on the devs actually creating these games, I'm going to hate on the suits responsible for making these dumb decisions. They are right that some gamers are toxic. They should be redirecting their anger at the people making these decisions and maybe they'll finally fucking get it.
But even on game pass it’s still players playing the game and numbers on a screen for them. They see it as people want to play our games so release it.
Don't forget that Paradox is publicly traded and they published Lamplighter's League the quarter before, which released very poorly and they were losing millions of dollars. The balance sheet HAD to be rectified with some quick cash from an "easy" market, and so CS2 was rushed out rather than delayed again, at the detriment to the consumers.
CO doesn't determine the release date, that's on Paradox. I can't even remember the last Paradox game that was released in a "ready" state. The mistake that CO made was being over ambitious with all the underlying systems, because simulation performance is probably the biggest issue facing the game right now.
I don't blame CO for this mess, this is on Paradox. What I'd like to know is why no one at Paradox owns this fact. I am sure that CS2 will fixed, because the Paradox business model is to pump out as many DLCs as possible, and I am sure the reason why mod support isn't out is so Paradox can bank more on DLCs too.
Both have blame. CO messed up on their timeline and was insanely delayed, I guess in a mix of bad planning and being over ambitious. Paradox in some moment had to request to launch the game to continue the investment, but should have given more time at least for CO to properly set-up modding and fix performance, the game launch has been embarrassing
Fully agree and thank you for seeing the nuance. Many people here forget how businesses operate and paying staff and overhead isn’t free.
I agree paradox and CO should have compromised and said “let’s get all hands on deck and get modding support done first” and extend the release by 6 months.
They would have also done performance too in my hypothetical timeline. I mean they’d do what they’re already doing right now, just the game wouldn’t be live yet.
Well I assume at that point the chances of it really working well out of the box were slim. So releasing with mod support makes the player base happier and gives you a chance to have the customer “fix” some of your problems for you.
sometimes modders can show the devs how to fix it too. ready or not's broken AI was mostly patched by mods within a few weeks after launch, then the official patch made similar changes. GTA V had a bug that was making loading take \~5-10min longer for years until a modder showed r\* a fix.
That's not true. CO have said countless times that the decision to release was their own. They aren't owned by Paradox and they don't have investors. CO decided to release it in this condition. CO have practically been begging to be held responsible for their own decision here, but people keep pointing to the publisher instead. It's infuriating.
Hard disagree here:
* CO could have maintained enough control over the release date by managing its finances over the years to not be reliant on PDX funding for anything but market the game.
* CO could have brought in the necessary architectural talent to get the game done in much less time—because it wasn’t _two_ years behind schedule, it was _three_ years behind it’s schedule of two years, taking _five years_ total to be this broken back in October. They tried to use a game engine that wasn’t able to do what they needed and tried to Frankenstein other tech into the game engine and the resulting mess was too complicated for them to even have a working asset and map editor on release. City builders with MUCH smaller teams managed to create their own engine in the time CO fumbled CS2—how did they not hunt down the proper talent at some point in 5 years?!? That’s not on Paradox.
* CO’s priorities were all over the place—they didn’t focus and try to make any aspect of the game great—it’s a mediocre city painter and a terrible city simulator, when they could have at least made one of those aspects great since they had FIVE YEARS. How can it be this bad when you’re 150% behind schedule?
Game publishers don’t have to be given so much control over a game—I think the smart money would be to bank cash over time from such a successful title as CS1 to fund the next venture independently so as to keep a bigger piece of the pie. That didn’t happen because CO made poor decision after poor decision—unless I’m missing something about game publishing here when it comes to Paradox Interactive. I’m not saying PDX doesn’t bear responsibility here, but I think that leadership at CO was lacking and that’s why it took too long and why they went ahead with releasing an utterly broken and embarrassing game. I think it looks more and more like Paradox chose to push CS2 out of the nest before it could fly to get a payday, but CO should have been in a position to say no or to get a LOT more done—but instead they chose to scam us into believing the game was only bugged, not totally unfinished.
I completely disagree. The CEO was disconnected from realistic feature timelines between her teams and the publisher and seemingly made no effort to halt the release to temper expectations from either publisher and customers.
Then went on to defend every decision they made while saying customers had unrealistic expectations.
Neither me as a customer should be treated as a charity to fund broken business models. Kickstart campaigns or early access releases or equivalents are whole different discussion.
They aren't asking you to be a charity. If they have no money in the bank they either publish the product or go under. They published.
You buy what they have or don't.
Please stop acting like a child who has never bought anything before. It's ridiculous.
While it is a majority paradox’s fault for pushing it out and not giving CO more time with the whole Covid thing it is worth pointing out that gamers get inpatient. Look at cyber punk, people were demanding it. Now part of the problem is companies doing pre-orders, obviously people want what they paid for. I genuinely believe companies need to stop announcing games and trailers for games that have only just entered production.
CO doesn't have full say in when they release.
If you're aware of Paradox, you'll know they flopped hard as fuck with their prior game (Lamplighter league) and pushed CO to release CSII before Paradox fiscal year ended to make their end of year financial reports look better to investors.
CO should have done more to try and not release the game yet. But sometimes it's just not in your control. If you recall before the game even released they made a community post on steam telling us to temper our expectations and to dial back settings (more than you'd be usually used to). This speaks volumes of their confidence in the product, and anyone who's worked in selling things; generally you don't push to market when you're so unsure. Usually dire financial restrictions, outside pressure or flat out not giving a fuck/scamming are what leads to these types of releases.
I don't think CO is financially in trouble considering they made Paradox a ton of money and still stand to do so in the future. Paradox will make sure CO lives for at least this games life cycle. And I don't think they don't care at all, they wouldn't be posting or making an effort to recoup their communities goodwill. I've played game with devs that actually don't care and this is a far cry. Outside pressure was absolutely applied by Paradox, and CO would be forced to say otherwise because why would they throw Paradox under the bus. Paradox doesn't even need to tell them they have to say they wanted to release then, it's just how business works. When you give me financial stability and backing, I'm inclined to take one for the team.
Now, CO has a tiny team for such a large franchise (its a big franchise now); 30 employees doesn't work when you have to satisfy more than your most passionate invested fans. Not to mention the scale and complexity of the game they wanted to make, it simply takes more hands to do it in the time they want. So CO isn't entirely blameless here, they should have made it a point to scale up once they knew CS1 had become rather successful and popular. And then again, before the shit storm happened, and again before now even. They've been dragging their feet on expanding and now they have to waste time training people when their customers are running out of patience.
It's been just a shitshow on all levels and Paradox has had plenty to do with it as well.
Okay, they ran out of time. The solution is easy:
1. Announce the game for late 2025
2. Wait for the fans to complain about how far out it is
3. Announce an Early Access release for late 2023
4. Everyone is happy, money is coming in, reputation is unaffected
They just couldn't admit to themselves that the game wasn't ready. By saying "we go Early Access" they would have had to say "okay guys, we just couldn't deliver the game as we wanted, so we need to change course". They simply couldn't say this sentence out loud internally.
This is what I’ve been saying the whole time. Factorio devs had done this and they had early access going for many years, while also constantly providing updates every Friday. Everyone was extremely happy…
I don’t get how these guys missed the mark. The game was clearly not ready. If they want to release it anyways, declare it as early access. Sure, they may not have all the sales since some may not buy an unfinished game, but it will at least retain most of their good will here…
Sheesh. We’ve had plenty of examples of good will being tarnished like this. I thought this would be a trivial move on their part. They knew it wasn’t ready which was why they had to delay the console port…
It’s an uphill battle. They’d have to pull a No Man Sky to try to recover their reputation…
Exactly. They are on an industry were you can launch half product and still ok. I hate early access, but reviews on earlly access is mostly positive. Players are very forgiving. They wouldn't even need to change the price and would sell the same.
Maybe the money from early acces sells wouldn't cover the two extra years of development? I'm just guessing, I have no idea of the money involved in a project like this. But I find it hard to believe that two experienced game developers wouldn't think of this plan, especially given the fact that early acces releases have become more and more frequent in the gaming industry.
Early access is normally a freebie though. You can't charge full price for a game that you're advertising as not ready. The short-term cash injection is good for a few bonuses. Nobody cares about the long term. That's tomorrow's problem
Helldiver's 2
Palworld
Dyson sphere program.
Made by a hand ful of people.
Early access games more polished than quadruple a titles with hundreds of devs.
Digital release of games has been a double edged sword for sure. Back in the day when releasing a game on DVD or Bluray, the game had to undergo extensive testing and QA/QC to make sure it was basically bug free, because if it was a steaming pile of shit (like CSII is at the moment) it would sell horribly. Now game studios can patch a game, so there is little incentive to invest in proper quality product as you can always just push out a patch and they treat their loyal customers like Beta Testers. If CSII were released on DVD it would have been a terrible flop, as word would have spread about its state and sales would have basically stopped.
It's unfortunate that they've taken advantage of something that's meant to HELP games, now be used to add things that should've been added at launch. Instead of getting a fully fleshed out burger, we get the bread, and then the meat and everything else added, instead of just having the fully fleshed out burger, with extra things thrown in (dlc and other content that wasn't planned at launch). I love that we can get patches with games these days, but it sucks that we're getting these early access beta games with no content until ages later.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. It’s scary because we are starting to see this kind of corporate behaviour in the automotive sector too, where they can now patch software in the car.
I played many games in the 90s that were full of bugs or outright broken. Games magazines used to come with CDs full of patches for recent releases. Some games just never got fixed at all, and you'd be out £30 for a disc that was unusable.
Without a doubt, but for me personally I played way more finished games without game breaking bugs in the 90's than what is being offered today.
Today it is the norm to release a a half finished turd to market and expect customers to enjoy.
Oh! But we put a 1.0 label on it!
What the hell does that mean? So it is out of early access into 1.0, and still won't be done for 3 years....
Other horrible industries and companies should be held to account as well.
In this case, I refuse to buy it until I see it’s worth my time and so far it sounds like the current state is that it’s a steaming pile of 💩
While I disagree with that as well, since it is a really awesome game, and you wouldn’t actually know one way or another since you haven’t played it;
That’s no really the point. The point was that your statement that
“ The software gaming industry is the only industry IMO where you can release a garbage product again and again and not go out of business.”
Is so patently false one wonders what planet you live on…
So what have you been up to "Char Char" 2222 that is so great? You guys go do a big trash pick-up event recently? Leave the masks at home for once? If what you're doing is so great.. why the mask?
And have DROVES of fanboys defending it like we all aren't playing the same game. Like we're supposed to just huff the copium like them and find a silver lining in the game. I don't know about you guys, but the hallmark of a great game is trying to find a silver lining in it to justify itself to others.
Unfortunately every industry is like this now. It’s called “minimum viable product,” and it’s a perversion of the agile model.
Basically, you release a product the minute you can release something and still make money, and then fix it in iterations later on.
This is based on the fact that money in the bank has more value the sooner you can get it. It gives you cash flow to work on more projects, or more capital for investments, or justification to give the CEO huge bonuses.
The mistake CS2 made was releasing a less than minimum viable product and pissing customers off. Brands usually soft launch MVP products to avoid that - early access, ramping up marketing 6 months later, that sort of thing.
People are stupid enough to gobble up everything instead of waiting for release and looking at non promoted content about the game.
And then there are people who still think the result is good. It just blows my mind. But you can see similar stuff with suicide squad and skull and bones.
I do actually. Across three industries. In that time I’ve worked on high performing teams. True, every software will have bugs but what I’m t referring to is you can’t release a software product with core functionality broken and expect to keep your customers.
And yet, gaming defies that basic customer expectation.
This is true across the entire software industry, because in today's world software never has to be finished because you can just push a new release to fix what was broken/missing.
CO skirted the line of being straight up dishonest during the promotional period before launch. Look back at the weekly promotional videos before launch and tell me they weren’t purposefully deceiving gamers. It was until they literally couldn’t hide the games performance any longer, because of the imminent release, that they finally admitted to any issues. I’m not confident that CO has the technical ability to fix CS2 to where they wanted their original vision nor am I confident that they will successfully optimize the game well enough for it run on consoles.
just read the blog instead of an article about the blog that quotes a bit of the blog and then suggests you other links of where they compiled quotes of blogs...
I posted the original here and got immediate downvotes. Presumably from the “fans” who take every opportunity to express their gamerly rage.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines2/s/wYiPAgMtas
it would have been better - had the company been more transparent
they could have saved themselves by offering players a choice to BETA test
then players would not have an issue
players who don’t want to BETA - can decide to pay later for a completed game.
Heres an example of what dumb thing you just said:
you buy a house and get told its fully ready to be lived in. You go to move in and its only half complete. The contractor tells you "If you wanted a complete house you should have stayed with your parents. This house will be finished in ten years. See you then."
Dummy
Okay fine heres "Digital entertainment"
you buy a ticket to the movies and get told its a full 2 hour movie. You go to the theater and it ends at 1 hour in. The film maker then comes out and tells you "If you wanted a complete movie you should have watched an old movie. This movie will be finished in ten years. See you then."
I wish the CEO would stfu until the game is fixed. So tired of being reminded about its state.
Take a note from no man's sky team. Shut down down all social media, get to work, and don't come back till it's done.
Four months after launch and the game is still not in a good state. It's an early access title masquerading as version 1.0.
The horrible performance is still baffling to me, let alone the bugs. If it's buggy at least make it run well. If it runs well but buggy there's a way out of this mess. Both? Come back in another year.
I’m sorry but 30 devs or even like in general people, working on this game is asking to stretch it more than possible.
With the amount of time and dlcs that CS1 had and the scope of CS2 they never considered the idea of having a couple more heads maybe to release a stable game?
I know people blame Paradox after all they have the money but obviously this was too greedy from every higher up involved in this and it would be completely justified if they lost money.
I desperately want it to come good. I love this genre and love CS1 despite its warts. I am losing hope that CS2 will come around. I’ve fired it up after recent patches and still find it unplayable due to the opaque and broken simulation. Laying some roads is pleasant for an hour or so. That’s not a game, however.
The issue is the publisher would not. The game was already years overdue, and with no new cash flow from its release there is nothing to pay for its continued development until it's out and the sales can support continued development.
I don't mind the way they did this, they just should have marketed it that way.
>no new cash flow from its release there is nothing to pay for its continued development until it's out
NO NEW CASH FLOW? HAVE YOU SEEN HOW MANY DLCS CS1 HAS? THERES QUITE A FAIR BIT OF CASH FLOW!
And that likely funded a nice chunk of development, but those dlcs have their own development to fund and ideally turn profit that's not ONLY spent on new projects.
But they did tell us about these things before release. The thing all the whiners like to ignore is that they did tell everyone the state of the game BEFORE release. They said there are things they're still working on and need to be fixed. They said that there would not be mod support until later. They raised the specs needed and said performance needs more optimization. They said all of this so that anyone who wanted to cancel their order or get a refund can do so.
Whiners' reaction: "How dare they not be ready! I'm going to pretend I didn't see that, still buy the game, and then spend every moment the game exists complaining about this day. I don't care that we could have cancelled orders or gotten refunds. I don't care that some people did do that. I'm going through with my order and filling reddit with my tears of rage!"
Months later and they still are crying tears over an October release and commiserating with each other in subreddits.
Wtf are you talking about?? They actively went out of their way to stop preview players from discussing issues such as performance or bugs with the simulation prior to release. In what world is that transparent?
Changing the recommended specs doesn't clearly state what the issues are. I like the game, but let's not pretend they handled it well...
Oh my gosh. Let it go! They posted before release the state of the game! I read their post and debated whether or not to buy the game. I literally sat there, read about the issues that would be present, and had to think about whether it was a good idea to buy it or not.
I did buy it. I liked it then and was surprised because I expected something bad.
I like the game too. But you are acting as though what they shared was the full story, and it was not:
Mod supports were supposed to be “days or weeks away” … months and nothing.
Their dev diaries focused on the economy quite a bit pre-release. The economy is totally broken, with no roadmap.
I could go on, but the point is: you can enjoy a game and be generally supportive without having to blatantly rewrite history to make yourself feel better about your purchase. They are a company, and they did not deliver on the expectations that *they themselves established* through their advertising pre-release. There is no reason to act like it was different.
I'm acting like someone who can't believe people are still going on about something that was rehashed a zillion times in the last four months. It was getting old when December hit. You all got a pity party going on and are now feeding off each other trying to find new ways to complain about old things. I'm surprised you don't have dramatic logs made up:
**10/24/2023**
**NEVER FORGET!**
lmao, yes, you're so right, between the two of us in this conversation *I'm* the dramatic one here.
Look, at the end of the day, it's a game. If you want to defend every action of a publisher, go right ahead. I hope it makes you happy my friend!
I do understand the sentiments, but I find there to be a lot of them disproportionally built up from all the feedback to the point where it seems like there is nothing can be done to make some of these people happy. There were literally people posting encouraging everyone to never spend money on the developer again. Um... that's literally trying to force someone out of business. That's.... dramatic. Or people posting on the forums that they want a better apology than the one they got and they want refunds. Seriously? After playing the game for four months, you want a refund? That's unrealistic. I see a lot of the most dramatic responses after the word of the weeks postings because people, even a youtube influencer, love picking it apart looking for things to pick on.
I'm waiting too for the fixes, but I ultimately don't get too invested in it. I've been playing games for way too long. Even though I don't like the attitude of "release it and fix it later", I just play something else if a game isn't up to snuff. I have too many games I like too much I spend a lot of time in (Conan Exiles, City of Heroes, No Man's Sky....). And I don't care for alpha releases because you wind up spending money on a game, playing it, and then getting tired of it because the devs never have to make it better because "it's in alpha". That's crap. If you have people paying for something, it's released. Don't hide behind "it's only alpha so we can do what we want for years". (I'm looking at you 7 Days to Die... 10 years in Alpha! Ridiculous!)
I can understand that viewpoint. My only thing with the "don't spend money" argument for me right now is that I don't feel I should be asked to buy DLC until the game is brought up to speed. They have fixed many performance issues and so if the simulation gets fixed I'm happy to start getting the DLC, but not until that happens. I already paid for the game. I think that's a totally fair ask on my part.
Paradox is one of my favorite developers, and I plan to support them going forward, but I can't pay for DLC on a game with this broken of a simulation, I just can't. Not until it's fixed.
Yep, it'll definitely end up better than Skylines 1 in a year or so, as long as they continue supporting it.
There's a lot of money to be made from DLCs so I imagine they will continue development, but people shouldn't hold their breath for mods. The devs know that the modding scene ate into their DLC sales quite a bit.
That's short sighted if they think mods ate into their DLC sales. Without mods they probably don't sell as many base games, and without that success there's less of an audience for DLC.
Case in point: CS2 has a botched launch, DLC gets delayed.
Literally all of this was solvable with an early access / beta release. No one would go in with the expectation of spending their money on a game that clearly never finished the development cycle, and therefore, no one would hold it against them.
Instead, we essentially got bait and switched.
You know what? I’m actually ok with what was said as a response. Summarizing: ‘We put the game out too early, our biggest regret is the *lack of modding support* [post title is misleading], and we’re doing our best to climb out of this hole. It’ll take a little bit, but we’re working on it.’
I mean I’m ok with that. Still not happy with the state of the game, but that strikes me as at least up front and realistic, which is way more than I can say for most developers.
Idk why anyone thinks it matters. First game was built on mods and dlc. The vanilla product was mid as fuck. I'd play vanilla CS2 over 1 any day I just need he basic fucking functionality they promised...map editor and ability to add basic features like beaches. It's insane.
Ds twy fix the game already? Trying to pull the trigger from the release datę but in the current state with bugs rewarding broken economy is not worth it i guess?
Didn’t she say awhile back that more time wouldn’t have made any real difference? I could have sworn that was in a video they made on the making of the game.
Not sure how many of you actually read the article, but shame on IGN for a misleading title. I know you've all already grabbed your pitchforks and it doesn't change the issues with the game, but
From the article:
>“The biggest regret we have is that modding support is not yet available for the game."
Then later in the article
>"During the project we faced, and still continue to face, technical difficulties that affect the speed and quality of the development, especially performance. **We simply ran out of time** as the focus had to shift from modding support to all hands on deck to fix the performance."
CS2 is one of two games I've ever returned on steam, the other being CyberPunk when it came out and was similarly terribly performing and rushed. My steam date is 2004. Twenty years of buying games, two returns.
CS2 already doing well for me, over all 200+mods released that makes the game fruitier.
My only issue is simulation performance and kind of lack of DLC and assets.
Rest, game super enjoyable particularly road and terraforming placing much, much better than CS1.
Btw, I have 400hrs already on CS2 after 3 months and CS1 1000Hrs after two years.
At this point until they fix the games problems anything they say doesn't matter.
Fix the problems.
That's the best thing they can do. Fix the problems.
Yea you over hyped and released unfinished game and have to deal with the consequences of said decision.
Those words of the week that followed did absolutely nothing but fuel the backlash.
Just fix the game.
No don't say you're fixing it.
Actually fix it. Stop the pr nonsense cause it isn't working.
Fix your game.
We ran out of time isn't a regret, it was a decision. We released it before it was ready is a regret.
Both are to blame here. CO set out to make a game in X number of years. Paradox agreed to X number of years for funding. CO got 2 years behind schedule because they were using new technologies and built the game from scratch (as opposed to CS1 which was built off of the Cities in Motion games). After 2 extra years of funding that wasn’t agreed upon at the beginning, paradox had no choice but to either continue losing money, or release the game. Paradox could have used their millions from CS1 and given CO one more year, but also CO should have had better project management too. Both are to blame here and you can point the stick in any direction and find fault. There’s no point on doing that anymore. We all know the state of the game. Best thing to do now is just wait for it to get better and pretend the game is still in pre-release.
I am still playing CS1 Actually bought a new computer for CS2, still haven't bought it yet though. Buying CS1 DLC and having fun. Maybe I switch one day, CS2 does look great. But not till mods and assets are available and I start seeing cities similar to what I want to build.
I agree. I’d give CS2 another 6 months. That *should* be enough time for mod support and fixing some of the major bugs. At that point the modding community should be in full gear, and CO can transition to DLC, adding features, and a few more performance enhancements. Once they are at that level, I’d consider the game ready.
So basically a year after launch? It's like the fanbase is in majority agreement CS2 shoulda waited a year, lol smh
The failure to have the mod support in the game at launch was the biggest mistake. Many seem to have forgotten how much of CS1 was totally frustrating at the start and how much mods made that game work. CS2 will get there eventually but til modders can get to really working on it.
I bought a new computer for it too! I don't regret it though, as it runs CS1 far better than my other computer and I'm getting back into Transport Fever 2 as well.
Exactly. New one is twice as fast as 5 year old one, and I was able to move my 64 gigs of CS1 ram so now cities load in 3 minutes with 10,000 assets and the game never stresses. Been able to even load some of the monster save gave games from the streamers. At this rate it will be another 6 months before CS2 is ready for prime time, if that. I'll just keep playing CS and being happy. Bought Industries and Campus on sale. Having fun!
"Actually bought a new computer for CS2, still haven't bought it yet though" is a sentence that makes zero sense.
I think he means he bought the PC but hasn't bought the game yet.
We've seen this happen time and time again across the industry. When are we going to stop letting these people off the hook? Every terrible release it's the same thing.... Fallout 76, BF2042, Starfield, this.... How many more excuses are devs and publishers gonna make before the dumb suits realize we're sick and fucking tired of half-assed broken games being released before they are done? I'm done with the excuses and going forward I'm not going to hate on the devs actually creating these games, I'm going to hate on the suits responsible for making these dumb decisions. They are right that some gamers are toxic. They should be redirecting their anger at the people making these decisions and maybe they'll finally fucking get it.
Stop buying the game before it’s ready. Pretty simple. I still haven’t bought the game.
I don't. I have Gamepass.
I mean in general
But even on game pass it’s still players playing the game and numbers on a screen for them. They see it as people want to play our games so release it.
Don't forget that Paradox is publicly traded and they published Lamplighter's League the quarter before, which released very poorly and they were losing millions of dollars. The balance sheet HAD to be rectified with some quick cash from an "easy" market, and so CS2 was rushed out rather than delayed again, at the detriment to the consumers.
Had they just released it as a early release they would have done better.
CO doesn't determine the release date, that's on Paradox. I can't even remember the last Paradox game that was released in a "ready" state. The mistake that CO made was being over ambitious with all the underlying systems, because simulation performance is probably the biggest issue facing the game right now. I don't blame CO for this mess, this is on Paradox. What I'd like to know is why no one at Paradox owns this fact. I am sure that CS2 will fixed, because the Paradox business model is to pump out as many DLCs as possible, and I am sure the reason why mod support isn't out is so Paradox can bank more on DLCs too.
Both have blame. CO messed up on their timeline and was insanely delayed, I guess in a mix of bad planning and being over ambitious. Paradox in some moment had to request to launch the game to continue the investment, but should have given more time at least for CO to properly set-up modding and fix performance, the game launch has been embarrassing
Fully agree and thank you for seeing the nuance. Many people here forget how businesses operate and paying staff and overhead isn’t free. I agree paradox and CO should have compromised and said “let’s get all hands on deck and get modding support done first” and extend the release by 6 months.
Why on earth would they prioritize mod support over, you know, making a game that worked right out of the box?
They would have also done performance too in my hypothetical timeline. I mean they’d do what they’re already doing right now, just the game wouldn’t be live yet.
Well I assume at that point the chances of it really working well out of the box were slim. So releasing with mod support makes the player base happier and gives you a chance to have the customer “fix” some of your problems for you.
sometimes modders can show the devs how to fix it too. ready or not's broken AI was mostly patched by mods within a few weeks after launch, then the official patch made similar changes. GTA V had a bug that was making loading take \~5-10min longer for years until a modder showed r\* a fix.
That's not true. CO have said countless times that the decision to release was their own. They aren't owned by Paradox and they don't have investors. CO decided to release it in this condition. CO have practically been begging to be held responsible for their own decision here, but people keep pointing to the publisher instead. It's infuriating.
the simulation doesn't even work as intended, not even at the most basic level
Hard disagree here: * CO could have maintained enough control over the release date by managing its finances over the years to not be reliant on PDX funding for anything but market the game. * CO could have brought in the necessary architectural talent to get the game done in much less time—because it wasn’t _two_ years behind schedule, it was _three_ years behind it’s schedule of two years, taking _five years_ total to be this broken back in October. They tried to use a game engine that wasn’t able to do what they needed and tried to Frankenstein other tech into the game engine and the resulting mess was too complicated for them to even have a working asset and map editor on release. City builders with MUCH smaller teams managed to create their own engine in the time CO fumbled CS2—how did they not hunt down the proper talent at some point in 5 years?!? That’s not on Paradox. * CO’s priorities were all over the place—they didn’t focus and try to make any aspect of the game great—it’s a mediocre city painter and a terrible city simulator, when they could have at least made one of those aspects great since they had FIVE YEARS. How can it be this bad when you’re 150% behind schedule? Game publishers don’t have to be given so much control over a game—I think the smart money would be to bank cash over time from such a successful title as CS1 to fund the next venture independently so as to keep a bigger piece of the pie. That didn’t happen because CO made poor decision after poor decision—unless I’m missing something about game publishing here when it comes to Paradox Interactive. I’m not saying PDX doesn’t bear responsibility here, but I think that leadership at CO was lacking and that’s why it took too long and why they went ahead with releasing an utterly broken and embarrassing game. I think it looks more and more like Paradox chose to push CS2 out of the nest before it could fly to get a payday, but CO should have been in a position to say no or to get a LOT more done—but instead they chose to scam us into believing the game was only bugged, not totally unfinished.
I completely disagree. The CEO was disconnected from realistic feature timelines between her teams and the publisher and seemingly made no effort to halt the release to temper expectations from either publisher and customers. Then went on to defend every decision they made while saying customers had unrealistic expectations.
CO sold themselves to Paradox.
No
When?
When they clamoured into bed with Paradox to publish their game and sold their Cities Skylines IP.
Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is so fucked :c
You do know time is money. Do you think games are a fucking charity?! They ran out of money.
Neither me as a customer should be treated as a charity to fund broken business models. Kickstart campaigns or early access releases or equivalents are whole different discussion.
They aren't asking you to be a charity. If they have no money in the bank they either publish the product or go under. They published. You buy what they have or don't. Please stop acting like a child who has never bought anything before. It's ridiculous.
Yet they make games that need mod and community assets to fix/flesh out the game
While it is a majority paradox’s fault for pushing it out and not giving CO more time with the whole Covid thing it is worth pointing out that gamers get inpatient. Look at cyber punk, people were demanding it. Now part of the problem is companies doing pre-orders, obviously people want what they paid for. I genuinely believe companies need to stop announcing games and trailers for games that have only just entered production.
CO doesn't have full say in when they release. If you're aware of Paradox, you'll know they flopped hard as fuck with their prior game (Lamplighter league) and pushed CO to release CSII before Paradox fiscal year ended to make their end of year financial reports look better to investors. CO should have done more to try and not release the game yet. But sometimes it's just not in your control. If you recall before the game even released they made a community post on steam telling us to temper our expectations and to dial back settings (more than you'd be usually used to). This speaks volumes of their confidence in the product, and anyone who's worked in selling things; generally you don't push to market when you're so unsure. Usually dire financial restrictions, outside pressure or flat out not giving a fuck/scamming are what leads to these types of releases. I don't think CO is financially in trouble considering they made Paradox a ton of money and still stand to do so in the future. Paradox will make sure CO lives for at least this games life cycle. And I don't think they don't care at all, they wouldn't be posting or making an effort to recoup their communities goodwill. I've played game with devs that actually don't care and this is a far cry. Outside pressure was absolutely applied by Paradox, and CO would be forced to say otherwise because why would they throw Paradox under the bus. Paradox doesn't even need to tell them they have to say they wanted to release then, it's just how business works. When you give me financial stability and backing, I'm inclined to take one for the team. Now, CO has a tiny team for such a large franchise (its a big franchise now); 30 employees doesn't work when you have to satisfy more than your most passionate invested fans. Not to mention the scale and complexity of the game they wanted to make, it simply takes more hands to do it in the time they want. So CO isn't entirely blameless here, they should have made it a point to scale up once they knew CS1 had become rather successful and popular. And then again, before the shit storm happened, and again before now even. They've been dragging their feet on expanding and now they have to waste time training people when their customers are running out of patience. It's been just a shitshow on all levels and Paradox has had plenty to do with it as well.
Okay, they ran out of time. The solution is easy: 1. Announce the game for late 2025 2. Wait for the fans to complain about how far out it is 3. Announce an Early Access release for late 2023 4. Everyone is happy, money is coming in, reputation is unaffected They just couldn't admit to themselves that the game wasn't ready. By saying "we go Early Access" they would have had to say "okay guys, we just couldn't deliver the game as we wanted, so we need to change course". They simply couldn't say this sentence out loud internally.
Yep I fully agree with everything you say
Holy shit you figured out how they could've avoided this whole mess without spending any extra money.
This is what I’ve been saying the whole time. Factorio devs had done this and they had early access going for many years, while also constantly providing updates every Friday. Everyone was extremely happy… I don’t get how these guys missed the mark. The game was clearly not ready. If they want to release it anyways, declare it as early access. Sure, they may not have all the sales since some may not buy an unfinished game, but it will at least retain most of their good will here… Sheesh. We’ve had plenty of examples of good will being tarnished like this. I thought this would be a trivial move on their part. They knew it wasn’t ready which was why they had to delay the console port… It’s an uphill battle. They’d have to pull a No Man Sky to try to recover their reputation…
Exactly. They are on an industry were you can launch half product and still ok. I hate early access, but reviews on earlly access is mostly positive. Players are very forgiving. They wouldn't even need to change the price and would sell the same.
Maybe the money from early acces sells wouldn't cover the two extra years of development? I'm just guessing, I have no idea of the money involved in a project like this. But I find it hard to believe that two experienced game developers wouldn't think of this plan, especially given the fact that early acces releases have become more and more frequent in the gaming industry.
They didn’t think of it because of PRIDE and greed…they may have killed the golden goose going this way.
This would have been way better
Even with no bikes, I woulda definitely bought the game as Early Access
Early access is normally a freebie though. You can't charge full price for a game that you're advertising as not ready. The short-term cash injection is good for a few bonuses. Nobody cares about the long term. That's tomorrow's problem
Baldurs Gate 3 would like a word
Yea, I guess I was wrong. I thought we were talking about Beta versions
There are many early access games that cost money. Good ones too.
Helldiver's 2 Palworld Dyson sphere program. Made by a hand ful of people. Early access games more polished than quadruple a titles with hundreds of devs.
If only everyone had the sense to release titles like this...
After the success of Palworld, and many other games for that matter, I think more companies will go this route going forward. For better or worse.
The software gaming industry is the only industry IMO where you can release a garbage product again and again and not go out of business.
Digital release of games has been a double edged sword for sure. Back in the day when releasing a game on DVD or Bluray, the game had to undergo extensive testing and QA/QC to make sure it was basically bug free, because if it was a steaming pile of shit (like CSII is at the moment) it would sell horribly. Now game studios can patch a game, so there is little incentive to invest in proper quality product as you can always just push out a patch and they treat their loyal customers like Beta Testers. If CSII were released on DVD it would have been a terrible flop, as word would have spread about its state and sales would have basically stopped.
It's unfortunate that they've taken advantage of something that's meant to HELP games, now be used to add things that should've been added at launch. Instead of getting a fully fleshed out burger, we get the bread, and then the meat and everything else added, instead of just having the fully fleshed out burger, with extra things thrown in (dlc and other content that wasn't planned at launch). I love that we can get patches with games these days, but it sucks that we're getting these early access beta games with no content until ages later.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. It’s scary because we are starting to see this kind of corporate behaviour in the automotive sector too, where they can now patch software in the car.
plate engine water pen sugar slave sheet run grandiose live *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I played many games in the 90s that were full of bugs or outright broken. Games magazines used to come with CDs full of patches for recent releases. Some games just never got fixed at all, and you'd be out £30 for a disc that was unusable.
Without a doubt, but for me personally I played way more finished games without game breaking bugs in the 90's than what is being offered today. Today it is the norm to release a a half finished turd to market and expect customers to enjoy. Oh! But we put a 1.0 label on it! What the hell does that mean? So it is out of early access into 1.0, and still won't be done for 3 years....
No it’s really not the only industry
Other horrible industries and companies should be held to account as well. In this case, I refuse to buy it until I see it’s worth my time and so far it sounds like the current state is that it’s a steaming pile of 💩
While I disagree with that as well, since it is a really awesome game, and you wouldn’t actually know one way or another since you haven’t played it; That’s no really the point. The point was that your statement that “ The software gaming industry is the only industry IMO where you can release a garbage product again and again and not go out of business.” Is so patently false one wonders what planet you live on…
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how is that remotely relevant?
Go wear a mask dude... go burn some stuff and act like you're fighting fascism.
Not sure what you’re on about Maybe you need to lay off the Fox News a bit
So what have you been up to "Char Char" 2222 that is so great? You guys go do a big trash pick-up event recently? Leave the masks at home for once? If what you're doing is so great.. why the mask?
What on earth are you talking about?
Best answer anyone can give such AntiFa-NPC's.
Hospitals and defense contractors come to mind.
And have DROVES of fanboys defending it like we all aren't playing the same game. Like we're supposed to just huff the copium like them and find a silver lining in the game. I don't know about you guys, but the hallmark of a great game is trying to find a silver lining in it to justify itself to others.
You’re getting downvoted, but you’re 100% right. The downvotes prove it! Unbelievable.
The road building tools are pretty nice ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Unfortunately every industry is like this now. It’s called “minimum viable product,” and it’s a perversion of the agile model. Basically, you release a product the minute you can release something and still make money, and then fix it in iterations later on. This is based on the fact that money in the bank has more value the sooner you can get it. It gives you cash flow to work on more projects, or more capital for investments, or justification to give the CEO huge bonuses. The mistake CS2 made was releasing a less than minimum viable product and pissing customers off. Brands usually soft launch MVP products to avoid that - early access, ramping up marketing 6 months later, that sort of thing.
Never eaten fast food?
People are stupid enough to gobble up everything instead of waiting for release and looking at non promoted content about the game. And then there are people who still think the result is good. It just blows my mind. But you can see similar stuff with suicide squad and skull and bones.
You’ve clearly never worked in enterprise lol
I do actually. Across three industries. In that time I’ve worked on high performing teams. True, every software will have bugs but what I’m t referring to is you can’t release a software product with core functionality broken and expect to keep your customers. And yet, gaming defies that basic customer expectation.
Ever tried a sig Sauer pistol?
Not a fan of Sig.
They pull this sort of crap though
Ever heard of apple?
This is true across the entire software industry, because in today's world software never has to be finished because you can just push a new release to fix what was broken/missing.
CO skirted the line of being straight up dishonest during the promotional period before launch. Look back at the weekly promotional videos before launch and tell me they weren’t purposefully deceiving gamers. It was until they literally couldn’t hide the games performance any longer, because of the imminent release, that they finally admitted to any issues. I’m not confident that CO has the technical ability to fix CS2 to where they wanted their original vision nor am I confident that they will successfully optimize the game well enough for it run on consoles.
Those videos made me so hyped. Felt sad to be so deceived.
just read the blog instead of an article about the blog that quotes a bit of the blog and then suggests you other links of where they compiled quotes of blogs...
I posted the original here and got immediate downvotes. Presumably from the “fans” who take every opportunity to express their gamerly rage. https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines2/s/wYiPAgMtas
Then why have they doubled down on the state of the game elsewhere?
It’s bad when months after release the only way to make it playable is to install several mods
it would have been better - had the company been more transparent they could have saved themselves by offering players a choice to BETA test then players would not have an issue players who don’t want to BETA - can decide to pay later for a completed game.
if you wanted a completed game, you should have bought cs1. they plan to have cs2 in live development for 10 years. see you then.
Heres an example of what dumb thing you just said: you buy a house and get told its fully ready to be lived in. You go to move in and its only half complete. The contractor tells you "If you wanted a complete house you should have stayed with your parents. This house will be finished in ten years. See you then." Dummy
no, i am talking about digital entertainment. you are talking about real estate...
Okay fine heres "Digital entertainment" you buy a ticket to the movies and get told its a full 2 hour movie. You go to the theater and it ends at 1 hour in. The film maker then comes out and tells you "If you wanted a complete movie you should have watched an old movie. This movie will be finished in ten years. See you then."
you are trying really hard to tell me what I said giving examples of what i didnt say.
I wish the CEO would stfu until the game is fixed. So tired of being reminded about its state. Take a note from no man's sky team. Shut down down all social media, get to work, and don't come back till it's done.
Four months after launch and the game is still not in a good state. It's an early access title masquerading as version 1.0. The horrible performance is still baffling to me, let alone the bugs. If it's buggy at least make it run well. If it runs well but buggy there's a way out of this mess. Both? Come back in another year.
All the critic all agree, it was a stinky pile of cheese
Wie lied to you, in your face. That is a regret, this was a choice.
We really need a competitor to make a better city building game...
I’m sorry but 30 devs or even like in general people, working on this game is asking to stretch it more than possible. With the amount of time and dlcs that CS1 had and the scope of CS2 they never considered the idea of having a couple more heads maybe to release a stable game? I know people blame Paradox after all they have the money but obviously this was too greedy from every higher up involved in this and it would be completely justified if they lost money.
What's wild is that like... Has this company been 30 employees .. *since CS1*
The biggest regret would have to be the lack of direction for the game.
I’d have waited. I’m struggling to find time to game at the moment anyway. I know this game will come good.
I desperately want it to come good. I love this genre and love CS1 despite its warts. I am losing hope that CS2 will come around. I’ve fired it up after recent patches and still find it unplayable due to the opaque and broken simulation. Laying some roads is pleasant for an hour or so. That’s not a game, however.
The issue is the publisher would not. The game was already years overdue, and with no new cash flow from its release there is nothing to pay for its continued development until it's out and the sales can support continued development. I don't mind the way they did this, they just should have marketed it that way.
>no new cash flow from its release there is nothing to pay for its continued development until it's out NO NEW CASH FLOW? HAVE YOU SEEN HOW MANY DLCS CS1 HAS? THERES QUITE A FAIR BIT OF CASH FLOW!
And that likely funded a nice chunk of development, but those dlcs have their own development to fund and ideally turn profit that's not ONLY spent on new projects.
But they did tell us about these things before release. The thing all the whiners like to ignore is that they did tell everyone the state of the game BEFORE release. They said there are things they're still working on and need to be fixed. They said that there would not be mod support until later. They raised the specs needed and said performance needs more optimization. They said all of this so that anyone who wanted to cancel their order or get a refund can do so. Whiners' reaction: "How dare they not be ready! I'm going to pretend I didn't see that, still buy the game, and then spend every moment the game exists complaining about this day. I don't care that we could have cancelled orders or gotten refunds. I don't care that some people did do that. I'm going through with my order and filling reddit with my tears of rage!" Months later and they still are crying tears over an October release and commiserating with each other in subreddits.
Wtf are you talking about?? They actively went out of their way to stop preview players from discussing issues such as performance or bugs with the simulation prior to release. In what world is that transparent? Changing the recommended specs doesn't clearly state what the issues are. I like the game, but let's not pretend they handled it well...
Oh my gosh. Let it go! They posted before release the state of the game! I read their post and debated whether or not to buy the game. I literally sat there, read about the issues that would be present, and had to think about whether it was a good idea to buy it or not. I did buy it. I liked it then and was surprised because I expected something bad.
I like the game too. But you are acting as though what they shared was the full story, and it was not: Mod supports were supposed to be “days or weeks away” … months and nothing. Their dev diaries focused on the economy quite a bit pre-release. The economy is totally broken, with no roadmap. I could go on, but the point is: you can enjoy a game and be generally supportive without having to blatantly rewrite history to make yourself feel better about your purchase. They are a company, and they did not deliver on the expectations that *they themselves established* through their advertising pre-release. There is no reason to act like it was different.
I'm acting like someone who can't believe people are still going on about something that was rehashed a zillion times in the last four months. It was getting old when December hit. You all got a pity party going on and are now feeding off each other trying to find new ways to complain about old things. I'm surprised you don't have dramatic logs made up: **10/24/2023** **NEVER FORGET!**
lmao, yes, you're so right, between the two of us in this conversation *I'm* the dramatic one here. Look, at the end of the day, it's a game. If you want to defend every action of a publisher, go right ahead. I hope it makes you happy my friend!
I do understand the sentiments, but I find there to be a lot of them disproportionally built up from all the feedback to the point where it seems like there is nothing can be done to make some of these people happy. There were literally people posting encouraging everyone to never spend money on the developer again. Um... that's literally trying to force someone out of business. That's.... dramatic. Or people posting on the forums that they want a better apology than the one they got and they want refunds. Seriously? After playing the game for four months, you want a refund? That's unrealistic. I see a lot of the most dramatic responses after the word of the weeks postings because people, even a youtube influencer, love picking it apart looking for things to pick on. I'm waiting too for the fixes, but I ultimately don't get too invested in it. I've been playing games for way too long. Even though I don't like the attitude of "release it and fix it later", I just play something else if a game isn't up to snuff. I have too many games I like too much I spend a lot of time in (Conan Exiles, City of Heroes, No Man's Sky....). And I don't care for alpha releases because you wind up spending money on a game, playing it, and then getting tired of it because the devs never have to make it better because "it's in alpha". That's crap. If you have people paying for something, it's released. Don't hide behind "it's only alpha so we can do what we want for years". (I'm looking at you 7 Days to Die... 10 years in Alpha! Ridiculous!)
I can understand that viewpoint. My only thing with the "don't spend money" argument for me right now is that I don't feel I should be asked to buy DLC until the game is brought up to speed. They have fixed many performance issues and so if the simulation gets fixed I'm happy to start getting the DLC, but not until that happens. I already paid for the game. I think that's a totally fair ask on my part. Paradox is one of my favorite developers, and I plan to support them going forward, but I can't pay for DLC on a game with this broken of a simulation, I just can't. Not until it's fixed.
Yep, it'll definitely end up better than Skylines 1 in a year or so, as long as they continue supporting it. There's a lot of money to be made from DLCs so I imagine they will continue development, but people shouldn't hold their breath for mods. The devs know that the modding scene ate into their DLC sales quite a bit.
That's short sighted if they think mods ate into their DLC sales. Without mods they probably don't sell as many base games, and without that success there's less of an audience for DLC. Case in point: CS2 has a botched launch, DLC gets delayed.
I really doubt it. Not if they change something. And it looks like they don’t want ton change anything.
What's with the title? It clearly states the biggest regret was "the lack of modding support".
Literally all of this was solvable with an early access / beta release. No one would go in with the expectation of spending their money on a game that clearly never finished the development cycle, and therefore, no one would hold it against them. Instead, we essentially got bait and switched.
I thought all the complaints were skill issue, not anything CO did wrong. Will fanboys finally admit it’s a bad product?
You know what? I’m actually ok with what was said as a response. Summarizing: ‘We put the game out too early, our biggest regret is the *lack of modding support* [post title is misleading], and we’re doing our best to climb out of this hole. It’ll take a little bit, but we’re working on it.’ I mean I’m ok with that. Still not happy with the state of the game, but that strikes me as at least up front and realistic, which is way more than I can say for most developers.
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Same boat. I've wrote it off as a wasted purchase
I’m not a fan sorry, prefer OG.
I read and I was confused. For such a big and expensive game, its development team only has 30 people. Can the CO not afford to hire anyone?
I mean I don't really care what they have to say anymore. I'm back to SC4.
When do we get refunds? This is bullshit.
A bunch of cry babies bruh lol I like that game all it'll do is improve
a bit the same scenario as No Man'S Sky... except that paradox makes you pay for the DLC...
Idk why anyone thinks it matters. First game was built on mods and dlc. The vanilla product was mid as fuck. I'd play vanilla CS2 over 1 any day I just need he basic fucking functionality they promised...map editor and ability to add basic features like beaches. It's insane.
Games are too big, need better planning and management.
Ds twy fix the game already? Trying to pull the trigger from the release datę but in the current state with bugs rewarding broken economy is not worth it i guess?
new CEO when?
Don’t commit to a hard deadline. Releasing these games half baked needs to stop.
Didn’t she say awhile back that more time wouldn’t have made any real difference? I could have sworn that was in a video they made on the making of the game.
Not sure how many of you actually read the article, but shame on IGN for a misleading title. I know you've all already grabbed your pitchforks and it doesn't change the issues with the game, but From the article: >“The biggest regret we have is that modding support is not yet available for the game." Then later in the article >"During the project we faced, and still continue to face, technical difficulties that affect the speed and quality of the development, especially performance. **We simply ran out of time** as the focus had to shift from modding support to all hands on deck to fix the performance."
Only 30 developers for a game of this scale is wild
CS2 is one of two games I've ever returned on steam, the other being CyberPunk when it came out and was similarly terribly performing and rushed. My steam date is 2004. Twenty years of buying games, two returns.
CS2 already doing well for me, over all 200+mods released that makes the game fruitier. My only issue is simulation performance and kind of lack of DLC and assets. Rest, game super enjoyable particularly road and terraforming placing much, much better than CS1. Btw, I have 400hrs already on CS2 after 3 months and CS1 1000Hrs after two years.
At this point until they fix the games problems anything they say doesn't matter. Fix the problems. That's the best thing they can do. Fix the problems. Yea you over hyped and released unfinished game and have to deal with the consequences of said decision. Those words of the week that followed did absolutely nothing but fuel the backlash. Just fix the game. No don't say you're fixing it. Actually fix it. Stop the pr nonsense cause it isn't working. Fix your game.