Ok, I canceled my pre order. Now they have to start again.

This is a self fulfilling prophecy. If everyone cancels their preorder because the project might be cancelled, then it will be cancelled for lack of support. I understand people cancelling their order, but I'd advise that you wait to cancel if you want to see the project actually happen.

Oh, that would be the right hands to put it in, if they are going to salvage this thing.

Do you think if it winds up in Microsoft's hands & Obsidian's hands, that they might hire Mitsoda & Ellison back?

No. A large publisher like Paradox shouldn't need preorder support for a new game. Pre-ordering supports bad business practices and rewards companies prematurely, disincentivizing them from making a good game (or in many cases, even finishing it). Imo, people should reward a developer once they have actually made and released a verified good game, not before.

Stop asking for MS... MS is just like EA, where developers go to languish and die. Paradoxically [no pun intended], MS is pretty hostile to PC gaming, just like all the other biggest publishers (if not moreso because they fuck games up to propel their crap like Windows store and Unified Windows Platform). Every MS acquisition is a loss to the community, and moreso to the DRM-free gaming community.

Oh my, so it's even come to this... I was among the few so hyped that I pre-ordered it, but requested a refund after Brian Mitsoda was fired. This whole thing reeked of bad decision making and infighting from a mile even back then... *sigh* another Masquerade game with a shoddy fate.

On GOG you can cancel a pre-order at any point in time before a game is released. There's no real risk, just some money stuck in limbo. But I agree it's better to just wait for the game to come out and then buy it if it's any good... plenty of games keep reminding us of that nowadays.

Sure. In a perfect world that's how it works. But Paradox has already spent a ton of money on this. They may be back to nearly square zero. If they then start losing too much more money by issuing refunds, they may decide it's not worth it. IMO taking preorders before the game was at least in proper alpha is a BIG problem in the games industry today. They take preorders on CONCEPT. Not even PROOF OF CONCEPT.

From what I have seen so far about the game, I think a cancellation might actually be for the best.
It was shaping up to be really, really awful... hopefully the money isn't already vanished and everyone can get back their pre-orders.

A little bit of mean satisfaction for me: told'ya not to preorder, ever. After Cyberpunk, here's another good point.

It would be good if a developer broke their silence and gave an inside account of what went through with this project.

Thank god I didn't pre-order.

What's the difference between buying a game at launch, and pre-ordering it?

At launch it's already done, at least.
They had to actually do something tangible to entice buyers and try to sell more copies; with preorders, you just need to release something. Is it crap? Tough, you already paid and we delivered. We said videogame, you got a videogame, who cares if it's a minimal effort mess.


cough cough Cyberpunk 2077 cough cough, most preordered game ever cough cough

After the firing of Mitsoda and the unceremonious leaving of Ellision I had already scaled my expectations way down.
I guess this is just the latest nail in the coffin.

What's the difference between buying a product at launch, when you can see it and verify the quality, compared with buying it years in advance, when it might never happen and you have no guarantee of what the end product is going to be like? Are you serious?

Well, perhaps they deserve to get stung over it? After all, they have clearly failed to manage their team and the project. In what sort of dystopian future do we still hand over our money to companies that fail to deliver?

What an amazing scam game developers have managed to pull off ... game development is now being funded directly by the gamers, often paying full price years in advance, for a development project they have no say in, no control over and may never even see the light of day. And for games that, in many cases are not available DRM-free, in which case they won't even own their copies. What is this madness we are descending into?

First they cut all content by Mr. A. when it was still at Hardsuits. Now they take the IP from Hardsuit Labs and put it into the hands of some other studio. I wonder how much worse they can make the situation. Certainly many will now cancel the preorder. What fortune will the new studio fare in this ongoing Bloodlines II saga? What will become of Hardsuit? Will they close and open up under a different name to wipe the stains from their jackets after this whole mess?

However this is going to play out and whatever turns this story is still to take, one can only hope, that, whatever studio gets to work on the game, they will not bend to some unknown social media pressure groups composed of The Perennially Outraged™. I am not going to say anymore about this ...