Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 left a gaping, $28 million hole in Paradox's year-end financial report

Pandora from Bloodlines 2. She's a vampire with long curly hair wearing a victorian style dress.

(Image credit: The Chinese Room, Paradox Interactive)

Paradox aired its year-end report—where it chats all the money it has and hasn't made for the benefit of investors—earlier today, but don't worry, I watched it for you. Long story short? Paradox raked in a whole lot of cash this quarter: 23% more than it earned in the same quarter last year, making it Paradox's "second-best quarter ever". Hooray! Also, it managed to make 162% less operating profit for an overall loss of 245.4 million Swedish kronor (around $28 million). Uh oh!

And the reason is, well, yeah, it's Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2.

"The profit line, or EBIT [earnings before interest and taxes] is affected by a big writedown of the game Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2," said Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester. If you'll recall, Paradox announced last November that its troubled sequel to cult classic Bloodlines 1 hadn't sold as well as it had hoped, leading to a write-down of 355 million kronor.

Profit was also impacted by "scheduled amortisation of the entire capitalised development cost [for Bloodlines 2] over the period from October to December 2025, amounting to MSEK 345.7." Unlike the wince-inducing write-down, though, that's just a fairly bog-standard bit of accounting for the game's development costs (though those would, perhaps, have been lower had the game not been such a nightmare to create).

Absent the write-down, Paradox's profit would've shaken out to around 110 million kronor—still a hefty chunk less than its operating profit in the same quarter last year (395.3 million kronor), but, you know, still a profit.

Benny Muldoon in Bloodlines 2 — (Image credit: Paradox Interactive)

Now, to be fair, vampires weren't the only thing taking a bite out of Paradox's bank account last quarter. Wester and Paradox CFO Alexander Bricca pointed out that the volatility of foreign exchange rates has also been doing a number on the company. "The dollar was down, I think 12% if you look at the quarter average, [the] Euro down 5, 6%—so, all in all it impacts our top line quite significantly," Bricca told investors.

It's hard to see past that Bloodlines 2 iceberg, though. Wester tried to put a positive spin on things, mind you: "On revenue, it's our second-best quarter ever!"

Poor Bloodlines 2, is all I have to say. Sure, it should never have been saddled with that name and the attendant expectations, but I rather liked The Chinese Room's take on Vampire: The Masquerade. It wasn't perfect, but I enjoyed my time with it. At least Paradox doesn't blame the studio for the gaping hole in its finances: "The responsibility lies fully with us," it said at the time of the write-down. Still, I'm not expecting Bloodlines 3 any time soon.

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One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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