First reported by Eurogamer, Paradox announced this weekend that PlayStation Store preorders of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 are being refunded with the instruction that customers renew their preorder after planned “adjustments” to the game and its price.
This is in response to the backlash over core content being locked behind a $30 DLC, an unforced error at the end of a long, challenging development across two studios. Paradox noted that PlayStation customers will be able to place a new preorder for the game after it finally announces those adjustments on September 17th.
“Anyone who pre-ordered the Premium Edition through the PlayStation Store will be contacted and refunded starting Monday, September 8th,” a Paradox representative wrote on the VTMB subreddit. “You will be able to pre-order your Premium Edition copy again later, before the release on October 21st. Please note that this is an intentional first step in our planned course of action leading up to September 17th to deliver the best possible experience for you at launch.”
As for why this is only on PlayStation as opposed to other storefronts, our best guess is that the PlayStation Store won’t allow the sort of partial refund a price change would require. So, Paradox has to cancel the orders and have customers place them again at the new price.
In contrast, there is leeway in Steam’s refund policy for partial or full refunds for DLC that’s cancelled or misses its promised release window. So, a Steam preorder customer might be able to receive a refund of the difference between the old and new price.
Some type of price change seems imminent, but it’s still up in the air how much. The PlayStation Store refunds are the latest update on Paradox’s controversial announcement last month that two of the six playable clans in Bloodlines 2 will be paywalled inside a $30 DLC—on top of the $60 price tag on the base game.
Unsurprisingly, that idea didn’t go down well with players. Clans in Vampire: The Masquerade are effectively a combination of race and character class, and the original Bloodlines offered seven to pick from. To put it in perspective, just imagine if Baldur’s Gate 3 locked one third of its classes—say, the Warlock, Bard, Monk, and Barbarian—behind a $30 DLC at launch.
Paradox announced last week that they will be “making adjustments” ahead of the launch of Bloodlines 2 in light of the backlash. However, we have to wait until September 17th for a full breakdown of whatever changes Paradox is making to Bloodlines 2’s DLC and pricing.
Bloodlines 2 has had an infamously fraught development, beginning at Hardsuit Labs with an original release date scheduled for 2020. Paradox pulled the project from Hardsuit, citing concerns about quality, and rebooted it at Still Wakes the Deep developer The Chinese Room. Despite its turbulent history, PCG online editor Fraser Brown was surprised and impressed by his first hands-on, and it seemed like redemption was at hand for the troubled project.
But one third of the game’s playable classes being locked behind a $30 DLC at launch—raising the price of the full game to $90—has effectively killed Bloodlines 2’s new momentum and positive word of mouth. The best case scenario here would be a full mea culpa, folding all the clans into the $60 base game and lowering the price of the Premium Edition to reflect its relative reduction in value. However, a simple price drop with two of the clans remaining separate DLC isn’t out of the question—no matter how inadvisable.