Paroid marks the 10th anniversary of Cities: Skylines with a detailed plan of celebratory rewards

One of my favourite things in the entire world is the brash poetry inherent in the word ‘skyscraper’, and the many writing and language lessons gleaned from considering how utterly mundane that word actually feels to use. This week, the Cities: Skylines community join me in the “probably thinking too much about skyscrapers” club. Paradox’s city builder has turned ten.

To celebrate, they’ve constructed a towering roadmap of freebies for it and Cities: Skylines 2, including new radio stations, new content, and a free-to-play Steam event for the original running March 20-24.

Some blogly musings:

“We founded Colossal Order with the dream of creating a city-builder that would bring more freedom and creativity to the cities players can build. With Cities: Skylines, that dream not only came true, but thanks to the continued support of our amazing fans, we had the opportunity to keep growing and building this game and community many years after its release and take it even further than anticipated. It’s been an incredible journey that’s taught us so much – and still has more to teach – and we are forever grateful to everyone who made it possible and who joined us along the way.”

Cities: Skylines has continued to receive updates throughout the years, the most recent being last October. Its sequel launched in a rough state a year prior, though has seen some improvements since. It’s also seen some controversy surrounding “rushed” DLC, and still looks a ways off from overtaking the original in both popularity and reception.

Paradox have fessed up to misjudging the impact of Skylines 2’s launch technical shortcomings. Players are now “less accepting that you will fix things over time,” Paradox CEO Mattias Lilja told Edwin last year, with CCO Henrik Fåhraeus commenting seperately that “we were aware that performance was not great, but we underestimated how it will be perceived by players.”