No, Cities: Skylines 2’s performance issues aren’t because of the citizens’ teeth, developer confirms

An autumnal neighborhood in Cities: Skylines 2.
(Image credit: Paradox Interactive)

Cities: Skylines 2 developer Colossal Order has clarified that the game’s current performance issues on PC aren’t a result of the title attempting to render citizens’ teeth.

Ahead of the simulation game’s release on October 24, a joint statement released by Colossal Order and publisher Paradox Interactive stated that while the team “worked tirelessly to deliver the best experience possible, we have not achieved the benchmark we targeted”. However, it’s now been confirmed that this isn’t due to any dental details, so we can chew on that.

In a statement released to the press today (October 27), Colossal Order wrote: “Citizen lifepath feature does not tie to citizen geometry and does not affect the performance figures of the characters. We know the characters require further work, as they are currently missing their LODs [level of details] which affect some parts of performance. We are working on bringing these to the game along general LODs improvements across all game assets. 

“Characters feature a lot of details that, while seemingly unnecessary now, will become relevant in the future of the project.”

Yesterday (October 26), Cities: Skylines 2 got its first performance patch on Steam, with some depth of field optimizations, fixes for crashes, smoothed-out stutters, and more. The team wrote: “While this does not address all issues we are aware of, we wanted to get you these improvements as soon as possible.”

In TechRadar Gaming’s review of Cities: Skylines 2, Elie Gould gave the game a full five stars. They wrote: “Cities: Skylines 2 has lofty ambitions. Several interlocking systems come together to convince you that this isn’t just a city-building game, but a way to build lively neighborhoods full of small stories and intertwining threads. There’s a lot to love here, and if you fall for it, you’ll be hooked for a long time.”

If you want to play more games like Cities: Skylines 2, you’re sure to find some brilliant recommendations on our list of the best simulation games. You can also read our roundup of the best PC games for even more fantastic titles.

Catherine Lewis
News Writer, TechRadar Gaming

Catherine is a News Writer for TechRadar Gaming. Armed with a journalism degree from The University of Sheffield, she was sucked into the games media industry after spending far too much time on her university newspaper writing about Pokémon and cool indie games, and realising that was a very cool job, actually. She previously spent 19 months working at GAMINGbible as a full-time journalist. She loves all things Nintendo, and will never stop talking about Xenoblade Chronicles. 

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