Paradox writes down $37 million in development costs for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 after underperformance

Paradox Interactive has announced it's making a multi-million dollar write-down of development costs for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 after the game failed to meet sales projections following its October 21 release.

The details:

• As announced in a new press release, the publisher has made a non-cash write-down of 355 million SEK ($37.4 million), reducing the value it previously assigned to the money spent on developing the game. Only 40 million SEK ($4.2 million) of the game's development cost will remain recognized as an asset on Paradox's balance sheet. This comes after the game failed to meet sales expectations, with analysts estimating that it has sold over 120,000 copies so far.
• In response to the weak sales, Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester said the responsibility lies "fully with us as the publisher.” The executive explained that "the game is outside of our core areas" and that "in hindsight it is clear that this has made it difficult for us to gauge sales." “Going forward, we focus our capital to our core segments and, at the same time, we’ll evaluate how we best develop World of Darkness’ strong brand catalogue in the future,” Wester said.
• Despite the poor sales performance, Paradox has committed to honoring its post-release plan, with Wester confirming the company will "deliver updates and the promised expansions to the game in the coming year." The game launched with a Metacritic score of 63 and is set to receive two expansions as part of its Premium Edition, after a pre-launch controversy led to two of its in-game clans being made available to all players.