Credits: Social Media
Video game solved the American housing crisis by completely removing landlords
Cities: Skylines II found a solution for America’s growing housing crisis, though the controversial move might annoy a particular group of people, landlords.
Though house prices in America are an issue in itself, there are a range of factors contributing to the housing crisis not just in the United States, but across the globe. No amount of loud budgeting is going to fix the housing market, but it seems video games can.
Cities: Skylines II puts the Sims to shame
Sims is often uplifted as the ultimate simulator game, and yet, there is a world of video games that do considerably more to dial up the realistic factor. Cities is one such game and allows people to build an entire society with assistance from an AI system.
Because Citites is meant to represent the real world, users are often battling against a virtual cost of living crisis that leaves them with few expansion options and one hell of a debt balance. Despite doing what real-world officials would do to offset the impact, users were still operating at a loss.
Critics usually take such complaints to social media, and there are now entire subreddits dedicated to similar issues.
After months of complaining from fans, the developers did something unexpected back in June as they ditched their virtual landlords.
First of all, we removed the virtual landlord so a buildings upkeep is now paid equally by all renters, the developer posted in a blog. Second, we changed the way rent is calculated.
They added: Even if they currently dont have enough money in their balance to pay rent, they wont complain and will instead spend less money on resource consumption.
The simple act of removing the landlords seemingly fixed the digital economy as users were finally able to enjoy the game again.
Axeing landlords is a controversial topic
With much of the world embroiled in some form of cost of living crisis, whether that be the price of food or rising costs of medical care, removing landlords from the equation has popped up more than once.
Though landlords are obviously against the idea, most everyday people seem to be behind cracking down on people “hoarding a dozen homes and only living in one.”
On TikTok, where a video about the Cities experiment was posted, one person said: “Who would have guessed making housing a commodity would lead to economic disasters.”
“Maybe not that extreme approach& but limit the number of properties.. the problem is not regular ppl with 2 condos& the problem is major corporate landlords,” another said.
A third wrote: “The landlords in the comment section are scared they’re gonna have to enter the job market again.”
