Players of the city building simulation game Cities: Skylines II are celebrating the release of “Bye Bye Homeless,” an unofficial mod that will automatically delete homeless people from their cities if they can’t find housing after 1.5 hours of in-game time, solving an apparent bug that flooded their cities with impossible to remove homeless people.
“Every one and a half in-game hours, the mod evicts any homeless household that fails to find a house or shelter (e.g., parks). You can configure the eviction period and method (either letting them move out of the city or simply deleting them) in the settings,” said the mod’s creator who goes by wxdao in the mod’s description.
As wxdao and other Cities: Skylines II players have noticed, the mod appears to fix a bug where, rather than moving out of the city or finding new housing, residents who lost their housing would get “stuck” in a “MovingAway” state or infinitely searching for new housing. According to posts on reddit and the game’s official forum, residents get stuck this way even when they have jobs and empty housing units are available in the city. These growing homeless populations had the knock-on effect of increasing crime rates in the cities, and flooding public spaces built by players, who saw homeless encampments overtake parks and outdoor gyms.