Hardsuit Labs has laid off a number of its employees a week after Paradox Interactive announced that the studio would no longer be developing Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. On Twitter, several staff members expressed their disappointment with the decision.

Nicole Stanford tweeted, “Hey, y’all. So unfortunately, there were layoffs at Hardsuit Labs, and the entire narrative team including myself were affected. If you know about any writing or narrative design opportunities, I would greatly appreciate hearing about the opportunity.”

Paradox Interactive, a game publisher based in Stockholm, Sweden, was established in 2004. Recently, the publisher has released BattleTech, Surviving Mars, Age of Wonders: Planetfall, Imperator: Rome, Crusader Kings III and Empire of Sin.

In a statement last week, Paradox said, “We have made the hard decision that Hardsuit Labs will no longer be leading the development of Bloodlines 2 – which also means that we will not be releasing in 2021 as previously planned. Since we cannot at this time communicate a new release date, we have also decided to stop accepting pre-orders for the time being.

“This game is very important to us and it has been an ambitious project from the very start. In order to meet our goals for it, we’ve come to the conclusion that a change is needed and, as a result, more development time is required.”

Last August, the creative directors of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 were fired. Lead narrative designer Brian Mitsoda and creative director Ka’ai Cluney were dismissed from the action-RPG project, with the former saying that the decision “came as a shock” and that he had “never been led to believe that [he] hadn’t succeeded” in his role.

The game, part of the World of Darkness series and based on the tabletop role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade, follows a human in Seattle, who is killed and resuscitated as a “thinblood” vampire.

In November 2020, Paradox CEO Ebba Ljungerud confirmed that Bloodlines 2 would not be released in the first half of 2021, explaining that due to staff changes, the COVID-19 pandemic, and delays in receiving development kits for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles, the game would be postponed past 2021.

Source: Gamasutra

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