‘Sales do not match our projections’: Paradox writes down $37 million of Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 dev costs
“The responsibility lies fully with us as the publisher”, Paradox says
Paradox Interactive has announced it’s making a multi-million dollar write-down of developments costs for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 after poor sales.
After numerous delays the game was finally released on October 21, but Paradox says an updated sales forecast made 30 days after release suggests it won’t hit the numbers it expected.
As a result, it’s decided to make a non-cash write-down of 355 million SEK ($37.4 million), which means it’s reducing the value it previously assigned to the money spent on developing the game.
The decision is an acknowledgement that the investment in the game’s development was worth less than it thought it would be, and as a result of the write-down only 40 million SEK ($4.2 million) of the game’s development cost will remain recognised as an asset on Paradox’s balance sheet.
The likely result of this will be a significant loss in the company’s next financial results, which Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester says is the fault of the publisher, not developer The Chinese Room.
“Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is a strong vampire fantasy and we are pleased with the developers’ work on the game,” Wester said in a statement.
“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.”
Despite the game’s slow start, Wester insists that the game’s continued post-launch development, which includes two expansions planned as part of its Premium Edition, will still be honoured.
“Our post-release plan remains firm,” he said. “We will deliver updates and the promised expansions to the game in the coming year.”
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 was met with a middling critical reception at release, with a current Metacritic score of 63.
