When I spoke to him separately, Fåhraeus admitted that Paradox knew that Cities: Skyline 2’s performance needed improvement before launch - they just miscalculated how much players would care.

The last time I played Cities Skylines 2 was in June 24th the day of their “performance” patch and it was STILL unplayable on my computer. My FPS was fluctuating between 20-40 on a completely empty map, all low graphics on 720p, and so I just closed the game instead of trying to play it. My computer isn’t amazing, but it isn’t bad either, I play Elden Ring 60fps, Bladurs Gate 60fps, Overwatch 200+fps, just to name a few.

As far as I can tell from the patch notes there has been no performance updates since then. If nobody can play the game, nobody is going to play the game. 20fps is not an issue you can just ignore and hope players ignore it too, what a hilariously out of touch statement.