Hello everyone,
We have an important update from the Life by You team regarding our Early Access release. After thorough consideration and review of your feedback, we've decided to adjust the release of our Early Access to June 4, 2024. You can watch a message from our GM Rod announcing the change here.
Our decision to move the start of Early Access is rooted in our commitment to creating a fun game and an enjoyable player experience, right from the start of our Early Access. We are just as excited as the rest of the community for the game’s release. As such, we want to ensure that it’s as smooth and fun for you as possible, and lays a strong foundation for building out Life by You during Early Access.
As always, it is your feedback and guidance that shape Life by You. With these next three months, we will make sure that the game is in a great spot for you all to guide us more effectively with your requests, with fewer distracting bugs or issues. Early Access remains a period for us to enact on your feedback– this will not impact Paradox Tectonic’s commitment to making the best life sim possible with you at the helm.
That being said, we’re sure that you have plenty of questions about this date shift. We have some Q&A for you below, and we encourage you all to leave your questions on our social channels as well. As always, thank you all for your patience and support, and we can’t wait to see you in June!
When is the new Early Access release date?
Our new release date is June 4, 2024.
Will it still be Early Access, and why?
We will still have an Early Access period. Your feedback is still one of the most integral parts of our development cycle, so we know we need that Early Access time to make the game that you all want to play. For several elements of gameplay, we know we won’t hit a “final” status until you’ve had your chance to play the game, provide your feedback, and we’ve had a chance to make changes.
As Rod has mentioned before, we want to make this life sim with you all in mind, and Early Access is still key to that process.
A reminder as well that, while Early Access is crucial for us, updates to the game, such as bug fixes and additional content, will continue after Early Access as well.
Why are you taking the extra development time?
Feedback was key for making this decision. As we continued to build out Life by You, we took into account feedback on our social channels, our Youtube, and a few creators and modders who are playing the game early. From that collection of feedback, we know a few major areas of focus that will help us iron out our Early Access launch and provide you with a better experience.
We’re working on a few main things including:
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Bugs! - First and foremost, we want to make your Early Access experience as bug-free as possible. Like Rod mentioned in a recent video, it’s hard to have fun if an issue is affecting your enjoyment of the game. We will be taking time to fix the bugs that will most impact your fun!
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Performance & Stability - We will continue to work on improving the game’s performance and stability so that the game runs smoothly on our recommended specs.
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Character Art - While we are happy with many of the improvements we’ve made, we know that the slow and steady progress hasn’t reached the quality bar we’ve set for ourselves quite yet. There are several areas we will continue to work on during this time:
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Proportions
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Character Idles and Facial animations
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Reduce clothing clipping
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Smoother animation transitions
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Building Assets - We’re making improvements to Build Mode constantly and, in addition to those improvements and UI changes, we will be adding more assets to improve building options.
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Gameplay Refinements - Your feedback has been instrumental in knowing what aspects of gameplay need refinement. If you’ve watched Rod’s recent videos, you’ll know that there are several elements that we would like to add to the game during Early Access and we want to get started on those in these months.
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Mod Tool Usability - After working with a group of modders, we understand that our mod tools could use some usability improvements. We’ll be hard at work to adjust the flow and feeling here during this time.
Of course, as we enter Early Access, we will continue to make changes to the game according to your feedback. Nothing about the date shift will impact the effect you all will have on the game, it will just take a little longer to get it into your hands.
What does this mean if I’ve pre-ordered?
We have made the decision not to re-enable pre-orders for Life by You’s Early Access on Epic. We deeply apologize to those of you who have pre-ordered, whether it be once or twice. While we’ve sincerely appreciated your support, we are not going to ask you to do so a third time.
If you’re still planning on playing Life by You on Epic, you can now wishlist the game on Epic here. We’re so thankful to all of you and all of our partners who have supported us on this road to Early Access and we can’t wait to reach it alongside you all!
What does this mean for the existing pre-order content?
First off, a huge thank you to everyone who took the time to pre-order Life by You. For the existing pre-order content, including the Life Begins Pack and the Nightlife Vibes Pack, we plan to make these packs available to everyone at our Early Access launch. We appreciate everyone’s patience and support, and plan on this pack being available to anyone who joins us on the Early Access journey.
For those who pre-ordered through Epic, please be on the lookout for an email from Epic. We’ve worked with our partners to make sure that your support does not go unnoticed, and appreciate your patience!
What does this mean for the Early Access Discord?
We still plan on opening our Early Access Discord, however due to pivoting away from pre-orders, we’ve changed the eligibility. We will initially open up our Early Access Discord to anyone who signs up for our email list. You can sign up for the mailing list here.
Once the game enters Early Access, we will open up the Discord to members of the community who have purchased the game through Steam or Epic.
We apologize for the shift in our plans here, but we hope that this allows more members of our community to participate in the Discord.
Can we expect to continue to receive development updates?
Absolutely! We love being able to provide insights into our development, receive feedback from you all on in progress features, and know that there are still plenty of features that we have yet to show (expect to see events, jobs, and the phone before we enter Early Access). Please do let us know if you have any other videos you’d like to see, and we will continue to update you all as the game continues to grow!
What types of feedback can we expect to be incorporated in the coming months?
In the coming months, our focus will be on improving our existing features and content for our Early Access launch. However we will absolutely continue to note down your suggestions and feedback throughout that time. While we want to ensure that our existing features are in great shape for you come June, we will be taking time to add to the game’s content and start to bring in some of the changes Rod mentioned in his recent feedback video.
How do you all feel about the date change?
While we are incredibly, ridiculously excited for you all to finally get your hands on Life by You, the team wants to make sure that that experience is everything we’re hoping for– so, while we need to contain our excitement a bit longer, we are really glad to have this time to improve the experience for you all.
We are still so enthusiastic about the work we’re putting into Life by You, and we hope that that reflects in the game you play at Early Access.
This is a second delay. What are the chances of a third?
This second shift is a direct result of feedback from not only you all, who watch our videos, but also some creators who have had a chance to play through Life by You recently. Now that we direct hands-on feedback from a group of passionate life sim players, we know we have a few things to address before we can enter Early Access.
While we feel confident that another change will not happen, we also know that no one can guarantee that promise. Quality and your satisfaction is our top concern, and we hope to continue to make decisions that prioritize that. We currently have a very specific scoped list of improvements and we feel good about the timeframe we have to complete these improvements.
What are the chances of earlier Early Access?
For those in the Early Access Discord, we do hope to show you elements of the game that we’re working on and receive some of your feedback in real time. While we can’t promise any build access at this time, we will continue to look for more opportunities to include you all in the development cycle even as we continue into the Early Access period.
What platforms will you be available on for Early Access?
Early Access will be available on the Epic Game Store and Steam.
Thank you all so much for your continued support leading up to our Early Access! We know you’re just as excited as we are about Life by You, and we can’t wait to bring you an even better Life by You experience.
We hope to see you in Early Access, starting June 4th!
With lots of love,
The Life by You Team
