Prison Architect 2, the sequel to Introversion's popular incarceration simulation developed by Double Eleven, will be detained until September 3. The delay was announced on Paradox's website, where the Prison Architect 2 team cited the emergence of "new technical challenges" as the reason for the release delay.

"While the build has now been certified on all platforms and is ready for release, several issues regarding memory usage and minimum spec configurations have surfaced, causing more obstacles," Double Eleven explained.

"Given Prison Architect's legacy, you, and our passionate community, we want to ship the best possible sequel to such a beloved game without cutting any corners to do so.

The statement continues with a more detailed explanation of how the developer came to the decision to postpone. In summary, the studio was conducting stability testing of the game in preparation for launch. In doing so, they noticed that in the minimum spec configuration, the play time before the game crashed or froze was below the developer's average standard.

This is not ideal. As a result, Double Eleven began "improving Prison Architect 2's memory usage to alleviate the situation," but this rework brought "new technical challenges" with "a noticeable increase in the number of crashes." Oops! Obviously, this was the exact opposite of what the developers intended, so the decision was made to delay the game.

Apparently, the extra time will be used to improve the game's stability, but Double Eleven is also considering taking this opportunity to "spend more time further developing some of the existing features that we know we can improve." This line also makes one wonder if Paradox is playing it safe after the Cities: Skylines 2 launch debacle and its aftermath. The city-building sequel received "mixed" reviews on Steam (recent reviews were "mostly negative") due to bugs and performance issues, which severely damaged the reputations of both Paradox and Colossal Order. The two tried to remedy the situation by hastily releasing the Beach House DLC, but the quality was so poor (there wasn't even a beach!) that they were forced to apologize and refund the money. ), they were forced to apologize and refund the money.

In that light, delaying "Prison Architect 2" until it is ready is certainly the right decision. Given the reputation of the original and the fact that a new developer is at the helm, the sequel, even if it runs smoothly, has a lot to prove.