Cities: Skylines 2’s resource economy is bugged, not a fraud

Colossal Order confirms several bugs after false player analysis

Developer Colossal Order finds itself besieged after the release of Cities: Skylines 2. While the criticism of performance issues is definitely justified to a point, the negativity sometimes goes a little too far – one example for this played out today. One player posted an analysis of the game’s resource economy after testing a few things related to this feature and came to the conclusion that it was all fraud.

“Shops and factories don't need goods/resources to generate income. You can't import goods by trains or ships to be used by shops or factories. They will stay in the terminal storage indefinitely. You can't export anything,” the user concluded their investigation. While the player provided proof in the form of screenshots, people eager to attack the developers jumped on this bandwagon to further hate on the game – without halting for a minute and considering that the user’s analysis may simply have turned out this way because of bugs.

Cities: Skylines 2 is not having a dream launch, but sometimes people go a little too far :: Colossal Order / Paradox Interactive

And, ‘lo and behold, this seems to be exactly what happened. A different user tried to corroborate the findings, but came to different conclusions, namely that the system seemed to be working as everyone thought it would, but that parts of it may simply be bugged. This was then confirmed by a community manager from Colossal Order.

“Resource management in Cities: Skylines II is, unfortunately, affected by a few bugs at the moment. We are aware of this,” the representative wrote. They stated that the developers were looking into several issues regarding this aspect of the game:

City services only trade with outside connections, even when storage companies in your city have the resources they need. They should of course be able to purchase the resources your city produces locally.

Harbors are mainly trading with your city’s storage companies, not other zoned buildings or city services. As you would expect, they should be able to trade with all zoned buildings and services, allowing your city to import and export through them.

We’re investigating reports that indicate the cargo terminal is affected by the same or an issue similar to the harbors.It’s also worth noting that transportation distance affects costs.

We expect that your businesses will prefer the closest storage facilities over a further away harbor/cargo terminal, however, that does not explain the reports we’re seeing.

Now, obviously it’s not in any way great that these bugs exist – more polish would have saved us from all this drama in the first place. However, it’s a good reminder to keep calm and await more conclusive information before bringing out the pitchforks.

Colossal Order released the first Cities: Skylines 2 hotfix yesterday to address technical issues and you can always use the best Cities Skylines 2 settings to increase performance if the patch didn’t quite work out for you just yet.

Cities: Skylines 2 – ‘not enough customers’ fix