A mere month ahead of its release, Prison Architect 2 has been indefinitely delayed, publisher Paradox Entertainment has announced.

This marks the third delay the game has suffered this year. It was originally marked for a PS5, Xbox Series S/X and PC launch on March 26, but was pushed back until May 7th, and then again until September 3rd.

This time though, no new launch date has been revealed for the sequel to 2015’s Prison Architect.

Back in May of this year, it was revealed that Prison Architect and Prison Architect 2 developer Double Eleven and Paradox had parted ways due to not being able to “find a commercial agreement that worked for both parties moving forward.”

Prison Architect 2 was therefore fully handed over to Kokku, a Brazilian studio that had actually been working with Double Eleven on the game since Autumn 2023.

“We have some difficult news to share: unfortunately, we will not release Prison Architect 2 on September 3rd because we need more time to improve both the game’s performance and its content,” said Kokku on a Paradox forums post. “Our continuous internal reviews and beta test groups have highlighted areas that we need to focus on more, mainly performance and content, which we need to address before launch to ensure that you, the players, get a good experience in the game. We need to raise the quality a bit more to meet the standards we’d like to achieve with this sequel.”

“At this stage, we can’t commit to a new release date as we need to re-assess the scope of the work needed to be done before the game is release-ready.”

According to the team, communication will be limited until they have a timeline they feel “comfortable with.”

In a brief Q&A below the announcement, the team confirmed that all existing pre-orders for the game will be cancelled and refunded in the next few weeks, and that all pre-order bonuses will not be put into the game for everyone to enjoy.

With the original developer leaving some close to the game’s launch and now an indefinite delay, there’s a grim feeling surrounding Prison Architect’s future. But Kakku is eager to assuage fears, stating that; “No, the game is not canceled. We are confident in the game but we want to raise the quality before release, mainly the performance.”

It’s another blow for Paradox which has struggled over the last couple of years.

Earlier this year, Life by You was delayed two weeks before its planned Early Access release with Paradox citing “additional development time” being needed. Not long after that, the game was cancelled entirely and the 24-person studio developing it shut down.

Last year in October, Paradox oversaw a disastrous launch of Cities Skylines 2 which was plagued by performance issues. Even now the game still has massive problems resulting in a “mixed” rating on Steam. Paradox will undoubtedly be looking to ensure it doesn’t have to suffer through this kind of damage to its reputation again.

On top of all that, Paradox parted ways with the developers of Lamplighters League after it underperformed, and the development of Bloodlines 2 has been a well-documented mess thus far. The result of all this chaos is a massive drop of 90% in operating profits for Paradox, much of which can be attributed to the cancellation of Life by You.