Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 to refund all PS5 Premium Editions following backlash over paywalled clans

Draugoth

Gold Member
vampire-masquerade-bloodlines-2-key-art.jpg

From next week, anyone who pre-ordered their Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 Premium Edition via the PlayStation Store will be refunded.

Community developer DebbieElla told players the refunds were coming as part of recent "adjustments", and confirmed we'll get "all the details" on the changes on 17th September.

Now, in a Discord post, DebbieElla writes: "We are working hard on the adjustments that we promised, and we will be able to tell you all the details on 17th September. Making significant changes like this involves many moving parts, and we want to make sure that we get it right with this change.

"Anyone who pre-ordered the Premium Edition through the PlayStation Store will be contacted and refunded starting Monday 8th September. You'll be able to pre-order your Premium Edition copy later again, before the release on 21st October. Please note that this is an intentional first step in our planned course of action leading up to 17th September to deliver the best possible experience for you at launch."

The post closed on thanking players for their patience, and later messages from DebbieElla confirm this only applies to this particular edition sold for PlayStation – purchases on other platforms are unaffected.

Article:
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 to refund all PS5 Premium Editions following backlash over paywalled clans
 
Paywalling clans was such a shitty move. Shockingly petty.

Almost makes me think they did it on purpose knowing they'd refund the pre-orders just to drum up mild controversy for free advertising.
 
Get your refunds and then wait for a 50% off sale. When meaningless games like this are paywalling shit, it's time to actually vote with your wallets. I know you won't, but one can dream.
 
Get your refunds and then wait for a 50% off sale. When meaningless games like this are paywalling shit, it's time to actually vote with your wallets. I know you won't, but one can dream.
Meaningless game seems like an unfair characterization of this title, though I understand not being excited about it considering the troubled development cycle. It is, however, a sequel to a cult classic of quite some reknown, so that adds a gravity to the title that similarly budgeted projects are going to lack.

I'm really hoping, against reason in a sense, that this game turns out great. The original is an absolute classic for me, and this has the potential, but I'm unconvinced. Nice to see them trying to take back the nickel dime shit though.
 
Meaningless game seems like an unfair characterization of this title, though I understand not being excited about it considering the troubled development cycle. It is, however, a sequel to a cult classic of quite some reknown, so that adds a gravity to the title that similarly budgeted projects are going to lack.

I'm really hoping, against reason in a sense, that this game turns out great. The original is an absolute classic for me, and this has the potential, but I'm unconvinced. Nice to see them trying to take back the nickel dime shit though.

Yes I don't mean to be so harsh but I suppose that I have conflated the cult appeal of the original LARP to the quality of a modern game sequel with a bad dev cycle during a bad time of gaming overall (speaking for myself). I just hate to see stuff that was once good become subpar for no real reason other than modern greed and mismanagement, and foolishly banking on legacy to get by instead of delivering a quality experience.
 
Yes I don't mean to be so harsh but I suppose that I have conflated the cult appeal of the original LARP to the quality of a modern game sequel with a bad dev cycle during a bad time of gaming overall (speaking for myself). I just hate to see stuff that was once good become subpar for no real reason other than modern greed and mismanagement, and foolishly banking on legacy to get by instead of delivering a quality experience.
I totally understand and empathize deeply with you brother. I, too, am pretty disappointed with the current state of the industry and its obvious future. Like I said, I hope this is good, but I'm sure it will be heavily tainted by modern annoying gender politics and DEI and the like, not to mention horrible modern female hairstyles, so there's no way it will be as timeless and moody as the original.....and yet I do still genuinely hope that I'm wrong and that it turns out great. It deserves to be a great Vampire game, but I've yet to see any indication from footage that we've got a classic title on our hands here.
 
They should get rid of the person who greenlit paywalling clans in the first place, especially with the sequel having less playable clans than the original game.

For me this changes nothing, it's either going to be deep sale or pass.
 
This was a monumentally dumb idea. I hope they fired the person who thought of this but it was probably some greedy retarded exec.
 
Greedy retarded execs huh?

I urge you not to look up DLCs for their other games. Paradox loves squeezing money out of its olayers.
They were too greedy and played it wrong this time. Paradox games receive new content regularly and that's always an incentive for people playing the original to spend more time with their favorite game. It also makes it much easier to hide that you're spending money on new expansions once every few months.

In this case they expected you to pay extra on launch day for crucial content that shouldn't be hidden behind a day1 paywall.
 
Meaningless game seems like an unfair characterization of this title, though I understand not being excited about it considering the troubled development cycle. It is, however, a sequel to a cult classic of quite some reknown, so that adds a gravity to the title that similarly budgeted projects are going to lack.

I'm really hoping, against reason in a sense, that this game turns out great. The original is an absolute classic for me, and this has the potential, but I'm unconvinced. Nice to see them trying to take back the nickel dime shit though.
That's the thing though, this game is not a sequel to bloodlines.
Paradox tried to make one, failed, then just decided to make a VTM game and call it Bloodlines 2 to fullfill all the preorders they had.
 
Bought this game years ago on gog (due to their currency wallet change I had to use leftover money)...and had it written off already tbh. So I will play it anyway.

Good job on backpedaling that stupid decision to paywall day1 content.
 
This was a monumentally dumb idea. I hope they fired the person who thought of this but it was probably some greedy retarded exec.
It's the Paradox way. Probably more of a publisher decision than developer one. Expect endless microtransactions and dlc totaling at least $500 throughout the next 5 years.
 
Last edited:
Let me introduce you to Paradox

It's got to the point with their games where they literally offer a subscription to access DLC across all their titles because there is so many of them
Arrested Development Crying GIF by HULU


There is nothing wrong with good and meaningful DLC's, but Paradox somehow is overdoing it. Usually they are also selling lots of useless cosmetic stuff as DLC's....thats why it gets bloated so fast.
 
Last edited:
Get your refunds and then wait for a 50% off sale. When meaningless games like this are paywalling shit, it's time to actually vote with your wallets. I know you won't, but one can dream.
Yep, that's what I doing. This whole thing was dumb and I am also not super excited by the game anyways, just seems much more action oriented.
 
Let's hope they include the clans in the base game. Charging extra for some cosmetics would make maybe more sense, or just proper expansions.
Each new trailer looks better than the last and the game is finally looking pretty interesting. World of Darkness is such an awesome setting and is ripe for potential games, I just hope we get more games in the future if this does well.
 
Top Bottom