‘Cities: Skylines II’ has found a solution to high rents: get rid of the landlords

The rent is too high, even Video game. For months, players of Colossal Order’s 2023 city-building sim, Cities: Skylines IIare struggling with exorbitant housing costs. Subreddits are filled with users who are frustrated that the cost of living Was Very high in their growing metropolis and complained that there was no way to fix it. This week, the developer finally announced a solution: the game’s landlords were kicked out.

“First of all, we’ve removed the virtual landlord, so now the building maintenance is paid equally by all tenants,” the developer posted. In a blog on the game’s Steam page. “Second, we’ve changed the way rent is calculated.” Now, Colossal Order says, it will be based on the household’s income: “Even if they don’t currently have enough money to pay the rent, they won’t complain and will instead spend less money on resource consumption.”

There is little problem of rent in the city Very Over the past few years, real-world fares have jumped substantially – in some cases, Growing rapidly More than a salary. In cities like New York, advocates and tenants alike are Fighting against fees making housing less and less affordable; in the UK, rent about 10 percent more This is more than a year ago. Airport To Berlin The cost of living is high. Landlords aren’t always to blame, but they are often the easiest targets for tenants.

From this perspective, perhaps cities’ The simulator is Very Well. Before this week’s solution, players were facing some of the problems being tackled by government officials and city planners. “For god’s sake I can’t fix the high rent,” one player wrote in april“Whatever I do, re-zone, de-zone, more jobs, less jobs, higher or lower taxes, wait times in sports. Increase education, decrease education. City services do nothing. It seems like whatever I try, it does nothing.”

on game SubredditPlayers have also criticized how “the game’s logic around ‘high rents’ is so disconnected from reality,” with one player assuming that centralized locations with amenities would inevitably have higher land values. “But the game creates the notion of a hyper-capitalist hell where all land is owned by speculative rent-seeking landlord classes who do everything possible to make people homeless rather than providing housing as needed,” the player added. “In the real world, social housing can exist centrally.”

It’s true. It exists in Vienna, which last year the New York Times described as “The rentier’s utopia.” Except that in Vienna the landlord is the city itself (it is the city itself). owns approximately 220,000 apartments). In Cities: Skylines IIThe Devs got rid of the landlords completely.

Colossal Order says in its blog that the change to the game will have “a transition period as the simulation adapts to the changes”, and the developer says it “cannot make any guarantees” about how it will affect games with mods. While the update aims to fix most of the problems at hand, that doesn’t mean players should never expect to see rent complaints again. When a household’s income is too low to pay, tenants will cry out loud about it. “Only when their income is too low to be able to pay the rent will they complain about ‘high rent’ and look for cheaper housing or move out of town.” Perhaps it’s time players had some in-game tenant groups of their own.