Cities Skylines 2 mods do exist, and you can find plenty of community-made improvements and tweaks for the city building sequel already. But in terms of official CS2 mod support, we’re still waiting. Colossal Order and Paradox promised a new, robust platform for building and sharing mods and assets, and with Cities Skylines 2 continuing to face criticism after its difficult launch, the arrival of official modding support is very eagerly awaited. Nevertheless, it’s not here yet. The long life of the original Cities Skylines was couched in mods, but given the performance issues and simulation troubles affecting CS2 so far, CO, naturally, has had other priorities. Now, the developer’s CEO, Mariina Hallikainen, addresses the lack of official Cities Skylines 2 mod support, explaining that it represents the studio’s biggest regret.
Cities Skylines 2 mods are essential when it comes to improving the economy, building tools, pedestrian behavior, and much more, but official support for the city building game is still not here. Released back in October 2023, Cities Skylines 2 still has an enormous amount of promise, but technical problems and performance issues have so far been holding it back. We expected official mod and asset-sharing tools to arrive in early 2024, but as we get closer to March, they still haven’t landed. Mariina Hallikainen, Colossal Order’s CEO, calls the lack of modding support a big regret.
“The biggest regret we have is that modding support is not yet available for the game,” Hallikainen says. “We have been working on it since the beginning of the project and the intent was to have it fully ready at release. Code modding support, map, and asset editing were all planned to be fully usable and mods shareable in one place.
“During the project we faced, and still continue to face, technical difficulties that affect the speed and quality of the development, especially performance. We simply ran out of time as the focus had to shift from modding support to all hands on deck to fix the performance. All this work is still ongoing. We’ll be communicating more on the status of the modding soon. It’s not an ideal situation but we are committed to keep working on this part of the game because it means so much to you and to us. ‘A Colossal Order game is a moddable one’ is a promise we have made to ourselves years ago and work very hard to keep.”
Paraphrasing much of the community and critical response to Cities Skylines 2 so far, Hallikainen also outlines how Colossal Order will address the “mess” that the game is in, and “the disaster launch” that was mired in performance problems. The CEO admits that Colossal Order faces a serious challenge when it comes to rescuing CS2, but remains positive that the team can deliver.
“We’d much rather be in a different position than we are in at the moment, but we cannot change the past,” Hallikainen says. “We’re working very hard to catch up on the missing modding support, missing platforms, the content for the Ultimate Edition, and improving the performance and fixing bugs this year. Only time will tell if this is enough to turn things around.
“We’re a small team of 30 developers and we have to plan the work in a way that creates the fastest results. So instead of spending a big part of the week working on the build deliveries and QA rounds, we can use that time to work on the fixes themselves. We are aware we have a mountain to climb when it comes to delivering on the expectations but we have our ice picks ready and we are surely used to the cold. We’re going to keep on climbing and you’ll continue to see that progress in the game.”
Hallikainen also says that the Cities Skylines 2 land value bug, that causes building costs to spiral out of control during the late game, will be partly fixed as of the next CS2 update. However, the land values problem is connected to a variety of other issues and factors in the wider Cities Skylines 2 economy, which will take “a bit longer” to be resolved. Cities Skylines 2 cycle paths are also still coming, though Hallikainen admits that she doesn’t know when Colossal Order “will get around to them.”
Take a look at all the Cities Skylines 2 DLC that’s on the way, or maybe try some of the other best strategy games available on PC.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or grab our PCGN deals tracker to net yourself some bargains.