Paradox is 'happy with the progress' of Bloodlines 2, but won't reveal who is making it

(Image credit: Paradox Interactive)

During the Q&A section of Paradox Interactive's Q3 interim report, the topic of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 inevitably came up. The question asked was simply: "Any news on Bloodlines 2 or its developer?" To which Paradox CFO Alexander Bricca replied, "The new developer is doing quite well and we are happy with the progress of the project now, but it's still quite some time before we can start to talk about release dates."

When Bloodlines 2 was announced in 2019 it was being developed by Hardsuit Labs, but after the sudden firing of two key team members and the departure of another, it was delayed indefinitely and handed to a different studio. Paradox has yet to announce which studio, and that's not going to change any time soon according to Bricca.

"We prefer to give the studio a situation where they can focus fully on the game development," he continued, "and not having to address fans reaching out to them. So therefore we have so far not disclosed the name of the studio and we are very happy to keep it that way for still some time."

Prior to this, Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester has said Bloodlines 2 was almost canceled completely, until "we got a pitch that we thought was convincing enough to run". He described the replacement studio as "a very reputable and talented developer" that has shipped a number of games previously.

There are plenty of studios that could be, but if you'll bear with me as I power up the speculation engines for a second, Paradox did acquire Harebrained Schemes in 2018. The studio behind BattleTech and Shadowrun: Dragonfall has experience with licensed games and RPGs, is based in Seattle just like Hardsuit Labs, and senior game designer Kevin Maloney lists it as his current employer after previously bouncing from Harebrained to join Hardsuit as a senior content designer on Bloodlines 2 in 2020.

If all this vampire talk has you itching to play or replay the original, here's how to have the best Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines experience today.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.