SimCity 2013 disaster helped green light Cities Skylines

Yes, the disaster of SimCity did help bring Cities: Skylines to market.

Cities Skyline developer Colossal Order has a city builder in mind ever since the company was founded in 2009.

Speaking to PC Gamer, CEO Mariina Hallikainen said the team was a little daunted by entering a genre dominated by SimCity.

"We were extremely afraid that people will just think of us as a cheap knock-off or something, that we have been just trying to copy what they did in SimCity," he said.

"So it was a little bit of a daunting task for us."

The project was not in active development when SimCity 2013 came out - because SimCity 2013 came out.

"When they announced [SimCity 2013] I was pretty sure there was no way we would ever be able to convince Paradox that we should make this game," Hallikainen said.

"But, yeah, they gave us the green light after they saw what happened with SimCity."

When asked whether SimCity's "stumble" is what pushed paradox into saying yes on Cities: Skylines, Hallikainen said it "must have helped a lot".

Huh. Funny how these things work out, isn't it.