As Cities: Skylines 2’s problems continue, Paradox Interactive returns to the first city builder with new paid DLC 18 months after its “final” update

As Paradox Interactive rolls from the awkward launch of Cities: Skylines 2the company is returning to the first game in the series, which it had apparently moved on from more than a year ago, with paid DLC.

Last May, 18 months ago for those counting, Paradox Interactive appeared to have closed the door on Cities: Skylines’ long roadmap with what would have been the city builder’s very last major update and mini-expansion. At the time, the company said it was shifting focus to Cities: Skylines 2, but that plan hasn’t gone so smoothly.

The much hyped sequel was launched with technical woes so glaring that they overshadowed basically everything else in the simulation. Months of patches and fixes haven’t completely cured all of Cities: Skylines 2’s ills, however, as its first DLC also suffered from similar problems and was eventually released due to fan backlash. More recently, developer Colossal Order delayed the sequel’s entire planned DLC – some packs were pushed more than a year past their original release window – to work on the game’s more pressing issues first.

On the heels of all this drama, Paradox Interactive is now going back to its safest fire hit. Cities: Skylines (The First) has just received three new paid DLC packs themed around nature. The Mountain Village Pack and Map Pack 3 both focus on “mountain peaks and alpine terrain”, while Radio Station Alpine Tunes brings new tunes.

“We also want to assure those of you playing Cities: Skylines 2 that the development of this new content for Cities: Skylines is a completely separate effort,” the publisher explained in its announcement blog. “The content you’ll find in this release for Cities: Skylines has been implemented by Tantalus, the studio that handled the console ports of Cities: Skylines. No resources were diverted from Cities: Skylines 2 for this – our friends at Colossal Order remain fully focused on developing and improving Cities: Skylines 2. This approach allows us to release any updates without compromising any of the games.”

Cities: Skylines 2 publisher says players are “less accepting” that games will “fix things over time” these days.