Cities: Skylines 1 will receive new paid DLC 18 months after the probably last update

As Cities: Skyline 2 continues its attempts to recover from last year’s disastrous launch, Paradox Interactive has announced and released a new batch of paid DLC for the original Cities: skylinessome 18 months after the delivery of what should have been the last major update.

Paradox concluded the Cities: Skylines 1 release roadmap in May last year with the launch of the latest mini-expansion, Hotels & Retreats. At the time, it said that developer Colossal Order would continue general support until the end of 2023 as it shifted its focus to Cities: Skylines 2.

But the launch of Cities: Skylines 2 went badlyresulting in multiple delays to the DLC plans after Paradox’s launch, while Colossal Order continued to improve the base game. An early attempt to force DLC on Cities: Skylines 2’s player base was so poorly received, Paradox promised postponement all future paid DLC “indefinitely”. Then, in September, the time had come announced further DLC delays so that Colossal Order could complete work on a “critical” asset editor.

And now, amid a series of other major failures for Paradox, the publisher has decided to return to a well that was thought to have finally dried up. 18 months after wrapping up support for Cities: Skylines 1, it has launched three new paid DLC packs for the game, all themed around mountain peaks and alpine terrain. There is the Mountain Village package and Card pack 3both part of Cities: Skylines’ Content Creator range, plus the Radio Station Alpine Tunes music pack.

“This content has been in the works for a while, as we know many of you still enjoy building and expanding cities in the original Cities: Skylines,” Paradox wrote in its DLC announcement. “No assets were pulled from Cities: Skylines 2 for this,” it continued, noting that the new DLC was created in collaboration with developer Tantalus. “Our friends at Colossal Order remain fully focused on developing and improving Cities: Skylines 2.”

All three new Cities: Skylines 1 DLC releases are available now on PC and will arrive early eight free community-created region packs inspired by the architecture of iconic cities around the world, launching next week for Cities: Skylines 2.

All this comes at a challenging time for Paradox, which has suffered a series of high-profile setbacks in recent years. In addition to the disastrous launch of Cities: Skylines 2, there is now also Prison Architect 2 postponed indefinitely after Paradox split with developer Double Eleven earlier this year, while Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 (which was almost canceled before The Chinese Room took over his difficult development) recently saw its release pushed back from “late 2024” to 2025. That’s in addition to Paradox’s decides to cancel the promising life sim Life By You in June, and the commercial failure from last year’s The Lamplighters’ League, which resulted in Paradox saying goodbye to developer Harebrained Schemes.

Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester spoke to Eurogamer earlier this year about the company’s problems admitted“It is clear that we have made the wrong choices on several projects, especially outside our core, and this must change.”