Would-be The Sims competitor Life By You was canceled because publisher Paradox realized “everything will be worse if we keep going, so we have to stop”

Delayed without a new release date just weeks before its cancellation, it seems that Life By You stood no chance – and publisher Paradox Interactive explains why.

Speaking in a recent interview with Eurogamer, chief creative officer Henrik Fåhraeus and deputy CEO Mattias Lilja discuss how sometimes “you go on too far and hope that you fix it, or steer it in another direction than we thought originally.” According to the publishing leads, Life By You is an example of both scenarios – there was simply too much wrong with the potential Sims 4 competitor to fix it.

“We trusted the devs quite a lot,” describes Lilja. “We thought maybe another extension will get us where we’re going and then finally realized everything will be worse if we keep going, so we have to stop.” As noted by Fåhraeus, “A lot of the flaws were super clear and we saw the flaws individually.” There just wasn’t enough time to address them in the end, however – especially after so much had already been spent on mending the game’s issues.

“We got closer and closer to early access,” the CCO continues, “trying to focus on fixing each individual problem.” Eventually, Paradox realized that “it’s too late, we’ve not been seeing the forest here.” The team couldn’t find a “single thing here that can actually compete viably in terms of gameplay. While early access can indeed be “very” useful, “you have to have something that is super tight already” – and Life By You, sadly, just wasn’t.

While there’s no Life By You, here are 10 games like The Sims 4 to check out instead.