Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 hasn’t sold as well as publishers Paradox predicted. As such, the company have announced plans to write-down 355 million Swedish Krona (approximately £28 million/$37 million) of the game’s development costs – essentially the financial way of saying something along the lines of ‘oops, this isn’t worth as much as we thought it was’.
In a notice announcing this write-down Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester said the game’s a “strong vampire fantasy” and that Paradox are pleased with the work that’s gone into it from developers The Chinese Room. As such, the finger of blame’s being pointed at Paradox themselves for having overtly high expectations regarding how well Bloodlines 2 would do financially.
“A month after release we can sadly see that sales do not match our projections, which necessitates the write-down,” Wester said. “The responsibility lies fully with us as the publisher. The game is outside of our core areas, in hindsight it is clear that this has made it difficult for us to gauge sales.”
Here are the bits which are relevant to those of us who aren’t here to look at Paradox’s money numbers. In light of this, Wester said the publisher will “evaluate how we best develop” World of Darkness games going forwards, but stressed that Bloodlines 2 will still be getting the additions which have already been set in stone for it. “Our post-release plan remains firm; we will deliver updates and the promised expansions to the game in the coming year,” Wester confirmed. So, if you bought the premium edition, you’ll still get the two expansions you paid for.
Paradox’s admission here follows departed Chinese Room co-founder Dan Pinchbeck recently revealing that the studio started trying to convince the publishers to call the game something other than Bloodlines 2 was a priority for him almost as soon as he became involved in the project, which bumped from studio to studio during development. “I came in and went, ‘we can’t make Bloodlines 2, we can’t make Skyrim, but we can make Dishonored,” Pinchbeck recalled.
The name didn’t change, leaving Bloodlines 2 as a game that in the eyes of many is defined as much by what it isn’t as what it is. “The overall problem here is that in a year packed with absolutely amazing games of all shapes and sizes, Bloodlines 2 is merely okay,” wrote Dominic Tarason in our review. “An entertaining mid-budget way to pass a few evenings in a familiar setting.”
