Mega-City One: Skylines Breaks Paradox Sale Records

Cities: Skylines [official site] has sold 250,000 copies in the 24 hours since launch, including preorders as day one sales. That's more than any other Paradox game in the same period - Europa Universalis IV surpassed 300,000 sales around six months after release - and around a quarter of SimCity 2013's first fortnight of sales.

Paradox are understandably pleased by the reception but they're already looking to the future of the game. When I played it before release, Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen told me that the team already had free content lined up - features that weren't quite ready for release, including tunnels. Support should continue for years though, as with Paradox's grand strategy mainstays, and will come in the form of paid expansions and free patch updates.

Paradox VP of Acquisition shared some piracy statistics on Twitter yesterday.

Here are a few small tidbits of info about Cities: Skylines - day 1 we had 0% piracy. pretty cool. Day 2 16%. As usual our plan for pirates is to make a great game even better through free updates - making it more convenient to use Steam instead. It's all about offering the superior service. That's how we bring down piracy. By making the paid experience a superior one.

Jorjani also says that Steam Workshop is "the best "DRM" ever", recognising the ridiculous amount of community creations already available for Skylines. Alongside the new buildings, somebody has already made a first-person mod. Roll on SimSkylinesCopter.

Paradox CEO Fred Wester thanked the development team, Finland-based Colossal Order.

“Our congratulations and thanks must also go to developer Colossal Order for making what is being widely described as the new benchmark of the city building genre. We have forged a strong partnership with them over a number of years through the release of Cities in Motion and Cities in Motion 2, and I am happy to see such a talented team now being widely applauded for their unmatched passion and skill.”

The commercial (and critical) strength of Paradox's internal titles is based around their longevity. It'll be interesting to see if Skylines has a strong (digital) shelf life and that will depend on the quality of future content. In the last few years, Paradox have developed a satisfying approach to DLC, one that provides new content on a regular basis while ensuring that the base game isn't neglected. If the Skylines of 2018 has as much strong additional content as the CK II of 2015, it'll be almost unrecognisable.

Alec's review of Skylines is here and if I find time, I'll take some snapshots of my city over the weekend. It's a hot mess.