Publisher Paradox Interactive has today taken the blame for the poor sales of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2.
The long in development sequel launched in October and was met with a ‘mixed’ Steam user review response, with fans saying it failed to meet the expectations they had for the sequel to Troika’s 2004 cult classic Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. IGN’s Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 review returned a 7/10. We said: “Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 takes another flawed but unique and remarkable bite at the jugular, with plenty to love and loathe alike, but I certainly enjoyed my time as an elder vampire at the very least.”
Now, after 30 days on sale, Paradox has issued a note to financial markets signalling a write-down valued at 355 million SEK (approx. $37 million) of capitalized development costs for Bloodlines 2. This write-down, Paradox said, was based on an updated sales forecast now it has had a month to look at Bloodlines’ commercial performance.
Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive, said the blame for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2’s failure lay at the publisher’s door, not that of The Chinese Room, which had been drafted in to save the project after years of development hell.
“Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is a strong vampire fantasy and we are pleased with the developers’ work on the game,” Wester said.
“We’ve had high expectations for a long time, since we saw that it was a good game with a strong IP in a genre with a broad appeal. A month after release we can sadly see that sales do not match our projections, which necessitates the write-down. 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. Going forward, we focus our capital to our core segments and, at the same time, we’ll evaluate how we best develop World of Darkness’ strong brand catalogue in the future.”
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 has two expansions planned as part of the game’s Premium Edition, and Paradox said it remains committed to delivering them. “Our post-release plan remains firm; we will deliver updates and the promised expansions to the game in the coming year,” Wester added.
Swedish game company Paradox’s main focus is on grand strategy games, which have proven enormously successful over the years. Games such as Stellaris, Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, and Cities: Skylines have all enjoyed big sales, and, in total, Paradox games have six million players each month.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, however, falls outside that core grand strategy genre, and always looked like it would struggle upon release. And while its development trouble began years ago, it suffered issues right up to launch. In September, a month before release, Paradox and The Chinese Room announced that the Lasombra and Toreador clans would be available in the base Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 experience following a backlash from players.
Paradox announced Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 all the way back in 2019 with then-developer Hardsuit aiming for a Q1 2020 release window. That, of course, never happened, as Paradox would go on to announce an indefinite delay alongside Hardsuit’s departure from the project. The Chinese Room was then announced as its new developer in 2023.
In a recent interview with the Goth Boss podcast, former creative director Dan Pinchbeck said the development team tried to work out how to get Paradox to not call the game Bloodlines 2.
“The tricky question around it was Bloodlines 1,” Pinchbeck said. “Are you making a sequel to Bloodlines 1? We used to sit there and have these planning sessions of how do we get them to not call it Bloodlines 2? That feels like the most important thing we do here, to come at this and say this isn’t Bloodlines 2. We can’t make Bloodlines 2; there’s not enough time, there’s not enough money.”
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
