Paradox Interactive has delayed Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 again.
In a new blog and video, The Chinese Room’s Alex Skidmore, who is the game’s creative director, and Paradox Interactive Deputy CEO Mattias Lilja, announced that Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 will now be releasing in the first half of 2025.
They then clarified that “the game is in a good enough place that we could have maintained our planned release window, Paradox and The Chinese Room collaboratively decided to prioritize polish.” So, the next few months will be spent on expanding the game’s story, incorporating community feedback, and giving QA a lot of leeway for testing.
Paradox and The Chinese Room have also committed to continuing to provide frequent development updates, to give the community the reassurance that the game is very much in a good state and nearing completion.
It would be understandable if fans were hesitant to take Paradox Interactive at their word. We had reported on this game in 2019, when Paradox announced a 2020 release date. As we now know, Paradox started work on this game as soon as they acquired the White Wolf Publishing, the owner of the whole franchise.
In 2022, Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester stated that a 2023 release date was possible. But at this point, developer Hardsuit Labs and the creative team working on the project already left. Wester admitted that they almost cancelled Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. Ultimately, they decided to keep what had been made so far, and find a new developer to finish it through.
Last September, they finally revealed that that new developer is The Chinese Room, the studio behind narrative landmarks like Dear Esther, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, and last June’s Still Wakes The Deep. This was a genuine reassurance that the project would be going back on track, but Paradox seemed to have other issues going on that the public didn’t know about.
Two months ago, Paradox unceremoniously cancelled their upcoming life simulation game Life By You, and shut down its studio, Paradox Tectonic. While Paradox stated they made the decision after losing faith that it would meet expectations, though its former developers allege their publisher didn’t really explain what was going wrong to them.
Cancelling Life By You was a very costly decision, to the tune of a $ 19.2 million write-down in development costs. Paradox also reported a 90 % loss in Q2 of this year as a result.
So, if Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 was previously an unmet promise that Paradox had to make good to their fans, things are different now. Paradox has to ensure that this game will become a big hit, as it now appears that the viability of the whole company is now at stake. You really can’t blame them for wanting to make sure that everything will be good, but it seems that’s also the case with a lot of other games now planned for 2025. We’ll see if the future is bright for Paradox, The Chinese Room, and Vampire: The Masquerade fans next year.
