Following in the footsteps of Capcom and Stardock s recent Publisher Weekends on Steam, Paradox Interactive is offering deals on a selection of its back catalogue over the next few days.

City-builder Cities: Skylines is likely the pick of the bunch, selling at 75 percent off its normal price for just 5.74/$7.49. Since its release last year, the SimCity-a-like (although distinctly better than Maxis 2013 iteration) and PC Gamer Community Champion 2015 has enjoyed a host of nifty expansions, intuitive mods, and is even being used by real life Swedish city planners to develop a new city district.

The space-set grand strategy-meets-4X Stellaris has a 20 percent discount, selling at 27.99/$31.99, while the publisher s latest slant on the Second World War Hearts of Iron 4 is going for 31.49/$35.99. The latter s forerunner, although now slightly dated, is just 1.99/$2.49 over the weekend, as is the original Magika. Fan Favourite Crusader Kings 2 receives a 75 percent cut and costs 7.49/$9.99.

The list of deals in its entirety can be viewed over here, however my own star pick from that lot is the wonderful Pillars of Eternity which, at 60 percent off, is going for 13.99/$17.99.

The Paradox Publisher Weekend Steam sale runs from right now until Monday, September 5 at 10am PT/6pm BST and everything else in between.

Behind Cities: Skylines sophisticated updates and real-world projects lies a dedicated community of modders. From the sublime to the ridiculous, it s an ever-burgeoning group who never seems short of ideas something Colossal Order and Paradox appear to have taken note of in the game s latest DLC.

The Content Creator Pack: Art Deco is the city-builder's next incoming expansion and is a collection of modder Matt Shroomblaze Crux s work. Paradox will publish the add-on at 3.99/$4.99 and will share the benefits from the pack s sales with the content creator, as well as offering an initial payment to cover the cost of production.

As the title suggests, Crux s original creations (some of which are featured below) include a range of Deco-inspired buildings, however future Content Creator packs will highlight the work and different styles of other intuitive modders.

After over 3,400 hours in Cities: Skylines, it s wonderful to have my own buildings become part of the game s landscape, says Crux himself. Because the Art Deco era is so highly regarded as one of the best building styles of history, I think it needs to be represented as such.

"I made the suggestion to Paradox Interactive and they allowed me to come up with the buildings of my choice. I m eager to see what the rest of the community thinks of them.

Intuitive Cities: Skylines players have recreated real life locations within the city-builder in the past, however the Swedish Building Service Svensk Byggtj nst is now using the game to plan the development of a new city district.

Alongside Paradox and officials from the city of Stockholm, a workshop is set to run on September 3 and 4 to explore possible methods for this district to become sustainable, and versatile enough to support the needs of its residents, according to a statement.

Norra Djurg rdstaden will add 12,000 new homes and 35,000 workspaces to help combat accommodation shortages in the area, and the idea is to simulate the district in-game to test different scenarios.

In addition to professional city builders and planners, Cities: Skylines players are also involved in the project, offering ideas and modifications in-line with the workshop s goals. Skylines Modder Alexander Oberroither will be flown in from Austria to take part in the workshop in person.

A citizen dialogue that functions well is key for urban city planning, now and in the future, says head of communications at the Swedish Building Services Erik Kalmaru. Computer games have shown to be a very effective tool to build engagement and generate ideas, but also to visualise the process. We undertook a previous project with Minecraft and Mojang which developed into a project spanning the world, and we look forward to seeing what using Cities: Skylines as a tool will generate.

For me, one of the most enjoyable things about classic city-builder Simcity 2000 was raising a bustling town from scratch and then razing it to the ground by way of self-imposed natural disasters a feature sorely missed from modern day genre champion Cities: Skylines. According to publisher Paradox Interactive, the latter is the feature fans have been asking for since launch, which is probably why the game s latest expansion adds exactly that.

Cities: Skylines Natural Disasters is due this winter, featuring a catalog of catastrophes to challenge mayor-players everywhere." This includes combating fires, earthquakes, and meteor strikes, among other doomsday scenarios, in order to keep your populace alive. Look, see:

Buildings and infrastructure will be destroyed, fire can spread across locations, and countless lives may be lost unless players implement the right emergency plans and responses and keep an ear on the new radio alert system, reads a statement from Paradox and developer Colossal Order. Fans of Cities: Skylines will have the chance to overcome everything from massive fires to meteor strikes, and allow their friends to do the same with a new Scenario Mode, where custom challenges can be designed and shared through Steam Workshop.

Besides Scenario Mode, Natural Disasters brings with it a new broadcast network which lets players spread emergency alerts and evacuation warnings, not to mention kick back and enjoy a host of new in-game music stations.

All told, the overarching idea of the incoming add-on is to plan, respond to, and counter the burgeoning devastation that relentlessly unfolds around you. But there s also scope to instigate the end of the world by your own hand you know, on the off-chance you re as twisted as me.

Cities: Skylines Natural Disasters is without a concrete launch date, but is due at some point this winter.

Paradox Interactive has released a new bit of free Cities: Skylines DLC called Match Day that enables digital mayors to build a football stadium in their cities, attract a team, and then deal with the consequences: The ticket income is sweet, but traffic on game day can be a real headache. The DLC also adds new stadium-related policies, and there's a new hat (and new chirps) for Chirper, too.

The DLC comes alongside a small update that makes a handful of relatively minor fixes and tweaks to the game lowering the amount of power that Solar Plants produce during the night, for instance, and setting snowplow blades to face in the proper direction when using left-hand traffic and also adds five in-game items that had previously been available only to those who had preordered the game: the Carousel, Dog Park, Bouncy Castle, Basketball Court, and Botanical Garden.

The Match Day DLC is live now on Steam, and you can see the full patch notes on the Paradox forums. You can also, since you're here, feast your eyes on a stunning, 50,000-building Cities: Skylines recreation of the city of Seattle, or if you're in the mood for something different, watch 200,000 innocent people get swept away in a deluge of liquid poop.

The PC Gaming Show returns to E3 on Monday June 13, featuring game announcements, updates to existing favourites, and conversation with top developers. You can find out what to expect here, and also book free tickets to attend in person at pcgamingshow.com. The PC Gaming Show will be broadcast live through twitch.tv/pcgamer from 11:30 am PT/2:30 pm ET/6:30 pm GMT, but be sure to tune in beforehand to check out The Steam Speedrun, in which one lucky winner will buy as many games as they can in three minutes.

Intrepid Cities: Skylines player inthoughtwelive has recreated downtown Seattle using 49,152 buildings, at which point the building limit put an end to his architectural dreams. I haven't been to Seattle this could be a replica Mombasa for all I know but Google Maps seems to corroborate things.

Starting with a template by Tanis_2589, inthoughtwelive "redid all the highways, and then eyeballed the rest using Google Earth as a reference". Traffic lights had to be forcibly disabled so as to avoid a traffic jam of apocalyptic proportions.

Seattle residents can attempt to spot their house in the full gallery here.

The weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful! At least I hope the fire is delightful—the fire in this case being a burning furniture factory—because that s the only way my poor citizens are going to stay warm since the power has gone out in the entire city. It s not the snow causing the problem, mind you, it s the cold. In Snowfall, the new expansion for Cities: Skylines, snow may slow down traffic on unplowed streets, but cold is the real killer. When the temperature drops, your chilly citizens crank up the heat in their high rises and townhouses, sucking the juice from your overworked power plants.

Back in September, the After Dark expansion added the tourism specialization and changes to day and nighttime traffic, yet I never felt much of an impact on how I played. Snowfall, on the other hand, almost immediately affects how I build, grow, and manage my city. For the first time since I deleted a hydroelectric dam and watched in horror as an entire residential zone was flooded in sixty feet of water, I was in a panic. Half the city was sucking up the juice to heat their homes, the other half were freezing, and my power plants were low on oil due to trucks being unable to reach them, thanks to my unsolved traffic problems. I enjoy Skylines immensely, but it s never felt like much of a challenge. Now, when it comes to power management on winter maps, it does feel considerably trickier.

Boiling point

You have a few different ways to keep your city warm. There s a new policy available that requires buildings to use more insulation, though construction and maintenance will cost a bit more and it won t solve the problem when the temperature really plummets. You can stick with electric heat, though you re going to need reliable routes to truck in coal and oil if that's what they use (and I shudder to think about solar-only cities when night falls and the temperature bottoms out). There are also new new buildings: boiler plants (which require oil) and eco-friendly geothermal plants, both which use upgraded piping to deliver heat directly to your residents. 

If you want to use the new piping throughout your city, it becomes available when you reach Boomtown status (2,400 residents) and you can manually overwrite any standard water pipes you ve already got in place. Be prepared to pay through the nose for it, though: upgraded piping costs five times as much as regular water pipes and twice as much in upkeep. This slows down the early hours of building a city, but in a good way: I now find myself drawing water lines more conservatively in case I need to upgrade them later, I leave more room for future power plants, and I generally put more thought into the layout of my new cities.

This new temperature feature is added to all your cities and maps, though will be far more drastic in the winter-themed maps where the temperatures really dip. Less of a big deal is the actual snow. It s certainly pretty, and it ll cover your roads and slow traffic even more than than the line of donut trucks you ve got inching their way through town. It s not much of a hindrance, though, and adding a few snow dump buildings produces a fleet of snowplows that race around clearing roads for you. It s a bummer that snow only occurs on winter-themed maps, and that winter-themed maps are eternally winter, though. I would have much preferred a true, yearly seasonal cycle that could be applied to all the maps. Modders: I ll give you two weeks to make that happen.

There are lots of new winter-themed parks and buildings available: hockey rinks and stadiums, ski resorts and winter-themed hotels, and a new health building, the sauna, which citizens seem excited about sitting in next to their naked and sweaty neighbors. The best addition are the trams, long desired by fans. Plop down a tram building, upgrade roads in your city with ones that have electrical cables running over them, then plan your routes just as you do for your bus lines. (I didn't know why people wanted trams so badly, but now that I have them, I completely love them.) Even if you don t buy the expansion, you get some free stuff with the update, like rain and fog, UI improvements, the temperature system, and number of tweaks and fixes. Also, Chirpy, that bird we all hate, has been given a Santa hat. The full list of what s in the expansion and what you get for free is here.

With Snowfall, Skylines is beginning to feel a touch closer the complex simulation many have wanted. I wouldn t say it s a complete game-changer, but it does add a few more frosty layers to your management challenges and options when it comes to power, and it makes having smooth traffic even more important for resource deliveries. Plus, there s something about a city at night, blanketed in snow, that warms the heart. Even if your citizens are freezing.

The Cities: Skylines Snowfall expansion will be out in just over a week, adding, as the name obliquely hints, snow-themed maps, heating infrastructure, snowplows, and other such bits of winter misery that seem like fun until you actually have to dig out your car at 6:30 in the freakin' morning in the middle of freakin' February just so you can get to freakin' work. 

Anyway, even if you don't feel like forking over the $13 the expansion will cost, you'll still be able to take advantage of a number of new features that will be released on the same day as part of a free update. It will include the following:

• Rain and fog-based cosmetic weather for existing maps outside the new Winter themed maps
• A new Theme Editor for map modding, allowing players to create new Map Themes ranging from different terrain styles to incredible alien worlds; here is one such incredible alien world An expanded UI for public transportation management
• New Chirps from everyone s favorite in-game social media avatar
• New Hats for everyone s favorite in-game social media avatar
• Newfound respect for everyone s favorite in-game social media avatar

Paradox held a livestream showcasing the new features in the expansion earlier today, which unfortunately is now over. However, you can still enjoy it thanks to the magic of video on demand, and the embed codes that allow me to paste it below for your viewing edification. The Cities: Skylines Snowfall expansion, and the free update, will both be out on February 18.

Cities Skylines' frigid update, Snowfall, will arrive just as winter begins to slacken its grip on the northern hemisphere: February 18 is the special day, and the expansion will cost $13—slightly cheaper than the After Dark update.

Splash your cash and you'll need to plan for the weather in new snow-themed maps. Heating infrastructure, snow ploughs and weather-resistant transport will be priorities. There's no word yet on whether Snowfall will simulate rampant vitamin D deficiency among your population, but hopefully new winter parks will keep them out and about.

If you don't want to pay, cosmetic fog and rain will blight your existing maps all the same, adding authentic misery to your metropolis.

Cities: Skylines keeps on sprawling. Following a cryptic teaser posted to Reddit by Paradox staff, the Snowfall expansion has now been announced, arriving "later this year".

Snowfall at last brings weather systems to Skylines. Cosmetic rain and fog will be released as a free update and appear on existing maps to make your citizens' lives that little bit less pleasant.

If you buy the full expansion, you'll be expected to handle the misery yourself. On winter-themed maps, cities will have to be heated as the cold sets in, transport infrastructure will be expected to handle the ice, and you'll want snow ploughs to keep traffic moving. Hopefully winter parks and new landmarks will ease the winter misery.

There's no word on price yet, but the After Dark expansion costs $15/ 11, so I'd expect something similar.