Cities: Skylines II Found a Solution for High Rents: Get Rid of Landlords
For months, players have been complaining about the high rents in the city-building sim. This week, developer Colossal Order fixed the problem by doing something real cities can’t: removing landlords.
The rent is too damn high, even in video games. For months, players of Colossal Order’s 2023 city-building sim, Cities: Skylines II, have been battling with exorbitant housing costs. Subreddits filled with users frustrated that the cost of living was too high in their burgeoning metropolises and complained there was no way to fix it. This week, the developer finally announced a solution: tossing the game’s landlords to the curb.
“First of all, we removed the virtual landlord so a building’s upkeep is now paid equally by all renters,” the developer posted in a blog on the game’s Steam page. “Second, we changed the way rent is calculated.” Now, Colossal Order says, it will be based on a household’s income: “Even if they currently don’t have enough money in their balance to pay rent, they won’t complain and will instead spend less money on resource consumption.”
The rent problem in the city sim is almost a little too on the nose. Over the last few years real-world rents have skyrocketed—in some cases, rising faster than wages. In cities like New York, advocates and tenants alike are fighting against the fees making housing less and less affordable; in the UK, rent is almost 10 percent higher than it was a year ago. From Hawaii to Berlin the cost of living is exorbitant. Landlords aren’t always to blame, but for renters they’re often the easiest targets.
From this perspective, perhaps Cities’ simulator is too good. Prior to this week’s fix, players found themselves getting tripped up on some of the same problems government officials and city planners are facing. “For the love of god I can not fix high rent,” wrote one player in April. “Anything I do re-zone, de-zone, more jobs, less jobs, taxes high or low, wait time in game. Increased education, decreased education. City services does nothing. It seems anything I try does nothing.”
On the game’s subreddit, players have also criticised “how the game's logic around ‘high rent’ contrasts reality,” with one player conceding that centralized locations with amenities will inevitably have higher land values. “But this game makes the assumption of a hyper-capitalist hellscape where all land is owned by speculative rent-seeking landlord classes who automatically make every effort to make people homeless over provisioning housing as it is needed,” the player continued. “In the real world, socialised housing can exist centrally.”
This is true. It exists in Vienna, which the New York Times last year dubbed “a renters’ utopia.” Except, in Vienna the landlord is the city itself (it owns about 220,000 apartments). In Cities: Skylines II, the devs just got rid of landlords completely.
The change in-game will have “a transition period as the simulation adapts to the changes,” and the developer “can’t make any guarantees” with how it will impact games with mods. Although the update aims to fix most of the problems at hand, that doesn’t mean players should never expect to see rent complaints again. When household incomes are too low to pay, tenants will be loud about it. “Only when their income is too low to be able to pay rent will they complain about ‘High Rent’ and look for cheaper housing or move out of the city.” Maybe it’s time players had a few in-game tenant groups of their own.
LengAwaits
I was trying to be funny and use some hyperbole. I guess I failed, as I so often do. Sometimes exaggerations can help to illustrate a point, and I admit I've gotten so used to seeing people on here talk about how voting for dems in 2024 is foolish if you're a leftist that I just automatically lumped you in with them. I apologize for that.
I don't consider myself a particularly virtuous person, if we go by the dictionary definition. I didn't intend to claim that my actions made me virtuous. The subjective nature of morality would make that rather pointless, anyhow. My discussion of virtue signaling in this case was more about acknowledging that on some level most people engage in performative acts meant to ingratiate themselves to their preferred social group.
I've got nothing to prove here, and I think I've made my point as much as I can before we both just start repeating ourselves; That strategy extends beyond the voting booth. I'm going to continue to do what I can in public digital spaces to keep people excited to vote and prevent a second Trump presidency, even if that means I have to tone down my online critique of democrats for a few months. I will continue to critique them in spaces where I can be sure that said critique doesn't chill voter turnout, though.
I've had a good time discussing this stuff with you, thank you for the interesting conversation, and sorry if I came off as a jerk! I'm going to try to get off of social media for the night, but I'll probably be on again tomorrow or later in the week if you want to continue to discuss/debate how online discourse can shape elections!
I hope you get a chance to see BR sometime soon, too! Always a pleasure to find another fan online!
We'll have to agree to disagree. In this instance I think anti-dem chatter on lemmy is more likely to chill youth turnout than it is to push the Democratic party leftward. I would prefer you didn't assume me to be a liberal, if that was meant to be an insinuation. We leftists do an awful lot of fighting and virtue signaling within our in-group and I am now and have been guilty of it myself... plenty.
For what it's worth, my vote in US "democracy" is and always has been a function of strategy. My life, on the other hand, is and has been dedicated to radicalizing myself and as many people as possible through dialectic, praxis, and building / maintaining / participating in alternative living systems within the US. You can dig into my post history if you're curious. I don't want to virtue signal at you.
Fantastic song! I really enjoyed Age Of Unreason as a whole.
Unfortunately, they've cancelled all dates for this current tour, citing “unforeseen family circumstances.” I'm really hoping that this isn't something band-ending. I've been afraid of them calling it quits for years now, and I want to see them live again. I've taken every opportunity (when I had the financial ability). That's only been 2004 and 2016 (with Against Me!, great show), plus seeing Greg do his solo thing in 2017 when he toured for the release of Millport.
No one. I just thought it was a fun story. If you'd like I can add a part where the left-hand-raiser fearmongers to the abstainers about how awful it is to be kicked in the genitals, though.
Ranting about the awfulness of the democratic party during a contentious election cycle, on a post about third party options, and with so much on the line for marginalized folx... It just seems like a poor strategy to me. The work is in the streets, not in virtue signaling your leftist moral superiority on Lemmy. For now I'm choosing to feign unity and enthusiasm until such time as I can drop the facade and continue with whatever praxis I can muster.
What do I know, though. I definitely don't have The Answer.
"Okay kids, today we're going to take a vote! Raise your left hand if you want everyone to be kicked in the genitals. Raise your right hand if you'd like everyone to be irreversibly sterilized! You can also choose to abstain from voting by not raising either hand."
Two out of the five kids present raise their right hand. One out of the five kids present raises their left hand. Two of the kids abstain.
As the children are being taken to the sterilization room the kid who raised their left hand turns to the two kids who abstained and asks "Why didn't you vote!? Now we're all going to be sterilized!"
One of the two replies, "Well neither of us wanted to be kicked in the genitals!"
What would you have me do?
What do you suggest we Americans do? I can vouch for the fact that spending my entire life feeling ashamed of my country has not helped to make it better, despite doing my best to be an outspoken critic of American policy.... so I'm hoping you can provide a suggestion for a viable path to redemption.
Call yourself whatever you want, at the end of the day we're all utopianists who're overly self-assured that our favorite pet-theory-system will eventually remove all suffering.
"If my vision for society were adopted, the world would be perfect!"
Keep dreaming. We're fucked.
Gasoline is 10% ethanol. E88 is 15% ethanol. The EIA estimates that we use 376 million gallons of gasoline per day in the USA. That's 37 million gallons of ethanol, minimum, per day.
I'm going to paste from a comment I made the other day:
There was a good discussion of this on Reddit recently. Sorry to link to Reddit, but it's a good, topical post worth perusal.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Agriculture/comments/1dv7fw9/how_much_good_land_is_used_to_grow_food_for/
My new hobby is going to nearby doughnut shops and ordering a dozen doughnuts.
When they ask me what kind I want, I just say "Whatever makes sense."
Stay tuned for my in-depth analysis of what each shop thinks "makes sense".
The rating says false, but the more you read of the article itself, and the many for-the-record things she's said in interviews throughout the years, the more clear it becomes that she talks out of both sides of her mouth; Perhaps so she doesn't alienate the anti-vax portion of her constituency.
Not surprising, to me, as she's historically been perfectly comfortable taking out of both sides of her mouth:
Jill Stein’s Ideology Says One Thing—Her Investment Portfolio Says Another