Cities: Skylines 2 dev says it has seen "a growing tendency of toxicity" in the city builder community, asks players to "be kind"

The developer of Cities: Skylines 2 has noticed "a growing tendency of toxicity" amongst its players and has asked the community to "be kind."

In the studio's regular 'CO Word of the Week' update, Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen addresses fans and reports the developer's latest plans for the city builder. After discussing things like modding support, console releases, and other issues currently being fixed in the game, Hallikainen touches upon a concerning trend in the Cities: Skylines community.

"We have seen a growing tendency of toxicity in our community, something we have not experienced to this extent before," the CEO writes. "Not only directed towards our devs but also our fellow community members - resulting in people hesitating to engage with the community."

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Hallikainen then says that this behavior will not only "really hurt" the community's mood in the long run but also discourage creativity and modding - "something we would be very sad to see."

Following this, Hallikainen asks the community for suggestions on how Collosal Order can improve the communication between its developers and players. "Should we add more moderation or is the only option to pull back our engagement on our end?" the CEO asks.

In the meantime, Hallikainen is asking players to "give feedback and disagree" but in a constructive, specific, and detailed way. The team also wants the community to remember to "assume people mean well," and that tone can be difficult to convey in writing. The CEO also asks for players to "help us make the community a nice place for everyone" and, above all else, "always be kind."

The city builder had a rocky launch, as detailed in our Cities: Skylines 2 review. The main issues are related to the game's performance as well as a variety of bugs, but Colossal Order has said that Cities: Skylines 2 performance fixes will "continue throughout the lifetime of the game," but the worst will be done by mid-2024.

Need to take a break from Cities: Skylines? Find out what else you could be playing with our best city building games list.

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.