It’s not often that a game stuck in development hell reemerges, with the publisher saying ‘the game is still happening, and we’ve got big news coming!’, before almost simultaneously refunding existing preorders for the game in question. Well, it’s happened now. The publisher in question is Paradox Interactive, and the game isVampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2.
Originally announced in 2019, the sequel to the cult classic (but itself very troubled) 2004 RPG has since gone through several major staff changes, culminating in developer Hardsuit Labs getting removed from the project.
So it’s been a bit of a messy development, but you know what? For Paradox to come out and refund the game is something that we could do with seeing more of. It’s effectively an admittance that the game is likely going to be a pretty different beast from what people were expecting back in the day of the original preorders, and that if people want to preorder the game, they can do so based on what gets unveiled going forward rather than what it was however-many years ago.
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The caveat to Bloodline 2’s exact situation is that they’re only proactively refunding physical copies of the game due to some kinds of changes in the bonus content that comes with them. Digital refunds remain optional, but that seems by the by as refunds on game preorders are pretty much always possible on any storefront up until the day of release. Nevertheless, any kind of proactive refund (i.e. you’re getting refunded whether you like it or not) by a publisher is a ballsy move, given that it can knock buyer and shareholder confidence. In the case of Bloodlines 2, confidence in the game is so low at this point and its troubles are such public knowledge that there really isn’t much for Paradox to lose at this point, but it’s still a significant move.
It makes me think ofRedfallthough, in the wake of whose disastrous release (well, not all of us hated it) we’ve slowly started gettingdrips and drabs from behind the scenesthat many staff at Arkane weren’t happy with the multiplayer direction of the game, and were hoping that Microsoft would either force a shift in direction or cancel it altogether when they acquired Arkane in 2021. Clearly, confidence in the game was extremely low at the studio, so how in good conscience could Microsoft push on with preorders while being aware of this? At times like these, it’d be in the public interest to retract preorders so that the public could decide to buy the game based on reviews and other post-launch feedback rather than careful marketing and often empty pre-release promises.
I guess the endgame of this argument is that preorders are kinda bullshit—a relic from an era when there was actually a risk that, without preordering, that game might be sold out by the time you got down to the local Electronics Boutique. But so long as people keep buying into the preorder idea, game publishers are never going to be fully accountable for the state of their game come launch day, because they can effectively make a ton of sales before we even know whether it’s a good game or not.
In the meantime though, the power remains with the publishers, so we just need to hope others choose to be as ‘magnaminous’ as Paradox was when it retracted preorders of Bloodlines 2. Something tells me it’s not going to happen any time soon though.
