Former dev from sunken Sims competitor Life by You alleges the team had 'the rug pulled' from under them—despite outperforming the company's internal metrics

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(Image credit: Paradox Tectonic)

Life By You - a character with long dark hair, glasses, and a green shirt stands on a suburban street

Unfortunately, that didn’t materialise. A mere month afterdelaying its early accesswithout a new date, Paradox released astatementthat the game wouldgo unreleasedforevermore. In the announcement, the company argued that “the road leading to a release that we felt confident about was far too long and uncertain.” Within a day, Paradox Tectonic—the division of Paradox making the thing—wasshut down.

However, a former developer from Paradox Tectonic alleges a very different story. In a lengthyLinkedIn post, Willem Delventhal, a former designer at the studio, says that the game was doing “extremely well” before Paradox delayed it. His team had an “internal metric” that they were outperforming—and were given a “thumbs up a few weeks before launch”, which made the alleged rugpull all the more confusing: “Two weeks before launch, we were told we wouldn’t be launching.”

Delventhal adds that the team was “not told why. Instead we spent a month in purgatory, and did everything we could to prove to them we were worth launching … We heard virtually nothing back.” In the post, he also mentions that when the executioner’s axe finally swung, its developers were “only informed of this via a public announcement”.

“To be honest, I have guesses about what happened,” Delventhal writes, “And while I can’t conjecture, I’m sure you have guesses too. As a business owner, some of them are understandable, but many of them are not. We were a strong team on a strong project ready to launch to a strong audience.

“This industry has become a place in which you can deliver more than expected, have AA money behind you, and still have the rug pulled two weeks before launch,” Delventhal adds, before resolving to focus on projects such as theIndie Game Academy, which aims to help smaller developers build and launch their games.

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