Gamers worried for Paralives following Life by You cancellation
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery in the world of gaming, but often, you can't do it as well as the original. From XDefiant and Call of Duty to Rockband and Guitar Hero, Diddy Kong Racing and Mario Kart to Palworld and Pokemon, we've seen them all.
In the simulation space, there's equally a lot of competition. While we've long since passed the days of building our own dream theme parks in Theme Park World, dealing with problematic jaguars in Zoo Tycoon, and tackling Bloaty Head in Theme Hospital, The Sims is still ruling the roost of simulation games.
Life by You kicks the bucket
While The Sims has stood uncontested for longer than we'd care to remember, Paradox Interactive's Life by You looked like it could offer some genuine competition. However, after Life by You was delayed to an unspecified date, the developer confirmed our worst fears and gave it the chop.
Posting on the Paradox forums, Deputy CEO Mattias Lilja wrote, "Sadly, we’ve decided to cancel the release of our long-awaited life sim Life by You." Explaining what went wrong, he added, "This was an incredibly difficult call to make and is a clear failure on Paradox’s part to meet both our own and the community's expectations."
Lilja admitted that the delay had been "to give the studio and the game a fair shot at realizing the potential we saw," but ultimately, there was no coming back from the decision. Apparently, the road to Life by You was "was far too long and uncertain," suggesting that Paradox thought it was best to cut its losses.
We're worried for Paralives
This leaves Paralives Studios' Paralives going largely solo against The Sims. While Life by You looked a lot more Sims-esque in terms of style, Paralives has a more indie feel to it - probably because it started out with just one developer.
Alex Massé has been tinkering away on Paralives since 2019, but as of May 2024, the team has expanded to 12 people and now sits under the Paralives Studios moniker. All of this means Paralives is (hopefully) heading into early access in 2025. Unfortunately, the Life by You situation has some worried.
When one Reddit thread asked if we're looking forward to the likes of Paralives, someone said, "I probably will play it if it also doesn’t get pushed back but it’s another I’ll believe it when I actually see it game for me. I’m tired of early access games being released and then abandoned quickly or hyping up release for years and then nothing happens."
Another sceptic wrote, "EA is sh*tting the bed with TS4...but the foundation that was built for this series is remarkable and IMO Life By You was never going to beat that judging from the little bit that we saw. I'll be surprised if Paralives comes out and is actually good enough to take customers from EA and keep them away."
When a thread asked us to pay respects to Life by You, someone else added, "Just like Paralives will." Still, there's plenty of support, with one fan concluding, "I'm still playing Sims 2, so as long as Paralives can offer me what Sims 2 has, while actually running reasonably stable on a modern machine, I'm happy."
While we're not putting all our eggs in one basket, at least the reception toward Paralives seems to be more positive than something like Krafton's uncanny valley inZOI or Hive5 Interactive's blatant Sims clone called Vivaland. If Paralives can make it into early access, it could mop up where Life by You failed.
