Cities: Skylines 2 achieves ultimate catharsis by deleting landlords to fix spiralling rent prices in its next patch
Now renters will just split the bills, but their building will collapse if they can’t cover the costs
Cities: Skylines 2 has found a delightfully straightforward solution to the very real-world problem of greedy landlords demanding excessive rent payments. The city-builder sequel will simply delete all its virtual leeches in its next patch, helping to bring down the cost of living in your digital metropolis.
The changes arriving in Colossal Order’s next patch are dubbed “Economy 2.0”, looking to stop the likelihood of players being bombarded by complaints of “High Rent” by their virtual population. Rather than having renters fork over their cash to a virtual landlord, the patch will remove landlords so citizens living together in a building just split the cost equally between them. Wow, it’s almost like landlords serve no valuable purpose and don’t need to exist at all for society to function properly.
On top of driving landlords out of the city, Colossal Order have tweaked the way that rent prices are calculated as a whole, basing a reasonable cost on the overall income of the household. If renters start to struggle with paying the bills, they’ll look to save some cash on things like resources before saying the rent’s too high - and subsequently moving out or relocating to more affordable housing.
If residents do continue to struggle to pay the bills, mind, their building will eventually start degrading and could even collapse if left without maintenance. Covering the rent will reverse the risk, gradually progressing buildings up a series of different levels.
Elsewhere in the next patch, you’ll now be able to remove building upgrades without having to knock the whole thing down thanks to a new bin icon on their info panel, while sub-buildings can also be freely moved around and turned on and off for extra control.
Colossal Order have reassured that existing saves will still work when the new patch lands, though the changes to the calculations and such mean that you might just need to keep an eye on things for a bit after you boot it up. Government subsidies are gone and the cost of City Service upkeep has been increased, so your city is likely to be spending more once you reload. More industrial space means more demand, while the shift in companies trying to be profitable also means more citizens may end up unemployed once things settle.
Colossal Order say they’re already lining up Cities: Skylines 2’s next patch for Q3 of this year, teasing expanded service import options, UI improvements and information, and some new buildings on the way - including what looks like a bin lorry and a water tower of some kind.