What you need to know
- Cities: Skylines 2 released in October 2023 to mixed reviews, due mostly in part to the game's instability and glitches.
- Developers Colossal Order and publishers Paradox Interactive have released a slate of hotfixes to deal with the game's more pressing issues.
- Cities: Skylines 2's upcoming hotfix, Patch 1.0.19, will be the last "standalone" hotfix for the game as the developers move toward focusing on broader bug fixes alongside new DLC content.
Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive have announced that the upcoming hot fix, Patch 1.0.19, for Cities: Skylines 2 is intended to be the game's final standalone patch. The team has stated it intends to focus more on producing broader patches that include additional free updates and DLC content in the future.
Cities: Skylines 2 was released in October 2023 for players on Steam and Windows PC, though the Xbox port of Cities: Skylines 2 was delayed until 2024, and there were concerns about PC requirements. While Cities: Skylines was quite popular among fans of city-building simulators, its sequel ultimately launched to mixed reviews. This was due in no small part to game-crashing bugs. Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive shared a commitment to focusing on fixes for Cities 2's biggest issues, and have released a slate of hot fixes to address game crashes and instability.
In Colossal Order's weekly blog post for the Cities community, CEO Mariina Hallikainen explained how the development team would shift away from the standalone hotfix schedule. Instead, the team would continue to release non-immediate bug fixes alongside standard content updates and DLC releases, similar to the content release schedule from Cities: Skylines.
Hallikainen explained that Colossal Order is still fully focused on improving Cities: Skylines 2 beyond Patch 1.0.19, but the update will be the final standalone bug fix. Patch 1.0.19 will include fixes for internally discovered issues as well as bugs reported by the community. While the full notes aren't yet available, the following details of gameplay improvements were shared:
- Land value will be affected by ground pollution. The ground pollution will first slowly reduce the land value increasing, and when the pollution gets worse it will start to decrease the land value.
- Land value won't decrease to 0 even with heavily polluted land.
- Land value will increase according to industrial company's profitability value.
Other quality-of-life changes in Patch 1.0.19 will improve parking space searching, shadow culling, pathfind scheduling, and reordered rendering-related systems. Colossal Order also detailed that Incinerator Plants received some much-needed balancing, as building the Extra Incinerator Furnace upgrade produced the opposite effect of less electricity, as opposed to more. Cargo Stations will have fewer traffic jams, while more teenagers will seek out higher education at High Schools. Patch 1.0.19 will also address the statistics panel, random crashes, and missing text, but players anticipating the addition of mod support will need to wait for the next major update.
There is no official release date for Patch 1.0.19, but full patch notes will be released closer to the update's launch window. Fans of Cities: Skylines 2 can look forward to new DLC content and free content updates in the game's future. Cities: Skylines 2 is available now on Windows as part of your PC Game Pass or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, or via Steam. Console players can look forward to the Xbox launch later this Spring.
