It appears that a new unannounced game has been cancelled, and it’s one based on a really popular transmedia franchise.
As reported by Insider Gaming, Blade Runner: Time To Live, a Supermassive Games interactive fiction game that was going to release in 2027. It was being developed for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and the 10th generation of Xbox and PlayStation consoles.
Insider Gaming seems to have gotten their hands on documents that described the game. It was referred to as a “character focused, cinematic, action adventure” with a “compelling story blending the philosophical themes of Blade Runner with kinetic action-adventure gameplay”.
Pre-production on Blade Runner: Time To Live started in September 2024, with Supermassive members who had previously made The Quarry. Apparently, it got cancelled before the end of pre-production, scheduled last month.
This was going to be a AAA production, with a $ 45 million budget. $ 9 million of that budget was going to actors and performance capture, but it still didn’t account for the soundtrack, performer rights fees, QA, localization, and potential DLC.
A source told Insider Gaming that the project was ‘rather impressive’, but its cancellation late last year was on the current owner of the Blade Runner IP, Alcon Entertainment. Alcon acquired the IP in 2011, and was behind the production of 2017 film Blade Runner 2049, 2021 animated series Blade Runner: Black Lotus, and Nightdive’s video game remaster named Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition.
And we would be remiss not to bring up Blade Runner 2033 Labyrinth, which is set to be the first game that will be developed, and not just published, by Annapurna Interactive. This game was revealed last 2023, and is likely to be planned to release for this console generation.
Insider Gaming did try to verify this information with Supermassive Games, and while Alcon was yet to respond, Supermassive said that they are ‘unable to comment on this.’
It’s not a good business environment for video game projects to be cancelled at this time, and we hope Supermassive Games still has enough going on internally that they won’t be affected.
Supermassive’s most recent release was The Casting Of Frank Stone from late last year, and this year they’re scheduled to deliver Little Nightmares III as well as The Dark Pictures Anthology: Directive 8020. And of course, they likely have other unannounced projects that are also in the works, so hope springs eternal that the studio will be OK in spite of this setback.
