Paradox Interactive is closing its Tectonic studio in the same week that the first game Life By You was canceled

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Earlier this week, Paradox Interactive announced that it was canceling Life By You, a simulation game intended to compete with Sims in development at Paradox Tectonic. With Rod Humble, lead designer of The Sims 2 and The Sims 3, and lead designer of Tectonic, fans had been pinning their hopes on Life By You, which was scheduled to arrive in Early Access earlier this month with an indefinite delay.

The early access launch never happened as Life By You was subsequently canceled and now, in the same week, Paradox Interactive announced that it was shutting down Tectonic, as reported by the website Game creator.

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“This is difficult and drastic news for our colleagues at Tectonic who have been working hard to bring Life By You to Early Access,” writes Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive. press release“Unfortunately, due to the cancellation of their only project, we have to make the difficult decision to close the studio. We are deeply grateful for their hard work in trying to introduce Paradox to a new genre.”

As we’ve already mentioned, the studio’s closure comes shortly after Paradox Interactive canceled work on Life By You. Wester said then“For a long time we had hopes for Life By You and the game potential we saw in it, but it is now clear that the game will not be able to meet our expectations. The version we would like and are cheerful with is too far away, so we are making the challenging decision to cancel the launch.”

Within days, Life By You was canceled and the studio behind it, Tectonic, closed. It’s yet another blow to an industry that’s hemorrhaging developers and studios left and right, and Tectonic’s closure joins an ever-growing list of depressing closures and layoffs in 2024.


Earlier this month, Dead by Daylight developer Behavior Interactive laid off 95 employees. Fae Farm and Dauntless developer Phoenix Labs laid off most of its staff and canceled games in development in May, and in the same week Square Enix announced it would begin layoffs as part of “structural reforms.”

In May, Xbox shut down four Bethesda studios, including Tango Gameworks, Hi-Fi developer Rush, and Redfall studio Arkane Austin. Take-Two Interactive has closed Rollerdrome studio Roll7 and Kerbal Space Program 2 studio Intercept Games, along with major layoffs at indie label Private Division. That same week, we learned that Deliver Us Mars developer Keoken Interactive had laid off almost its entire staff.

Elsewhere in the year, EA laid off approximately 670 employees across all departments, resulting in the cancellation of Respawn’s Star Wars FPS. PlayStation laid off 900 employees at Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Guerrilla and others, while closing London Studio. The day before, Until Dawn developer Supermassive Games announced it would lay off 90 employees.

At the end of January, we learned that Embracer Group had canceled work on the modern Deus Ex game at Eidos-Montréal and laid off 97 employees in the process. Also in January, Destroy All Humans remake developer Black Forest Games reportedly laid off 50 employees, and Microsoft announced it was laying off 1,900 employees across its Xbox, Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax teams. Outriders studio People Can Fly laid off more than 30 employees in January, and League of Legends company Riot Games laid off 530 employees.

Lords of the Fallen CI Games published 10 percent of its staff, Unity will lay off 1,800 people by the end of March, and Twitch will lay off 500 employees.

We also learned that Discord laid off 170 employees, that layoffs occurred at PTW, a support studio that worked with companies like Blizzard and Capcom, and that SteamWorld Build’s company, Thunderful Group, laid off approximately 100 people. Dead by Daylight creator Behavior Interactive also reportedly laid off 45 people.

Hearts Game guide Employees stand with everyone affected by layoffs or closures.

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