Who are the new developers of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 called The Chinese Room? A search reveals: The studio has undergone massive transformations.
With Bloodlines 2, one of the most anticipated role-playing games on Steam has just changed developers and been given a new release date of late 2024. But who is actually The Chinese Room, who are now working on the ill-fated new spin-off of Vampire: The Masquerade?
The Quick Answer
These are the British developers of Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, three largely positively reviewed walking simulators (Steam ratings between 68 and 78 per cent). But that is only half the truth.
The more complicated answer
The Chinese Room is no longer the same studio as it was beforesince its acquisition by developer Sumo Digital in August 2018 The staff of eight, which emerged from a mod team, was laid off back in July 2017, and the office in Brighton, England, was closed for financial reasons.
Who is Sumo Digital?
The British developer studio was founded in 2003 and now has 1,100 employees around the world. Sumo Digital most recently published The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Previously, they were responsible for the big Microsoft flop Crackdown 3 among others.
Dan Pinchbeck and Jessica Curry, the two bosses of The Chinese Room, tried to find funding partners in the period after the office closure and worked on prototypes on the side. One of these resulted in the VR game So Let Us Melt, which was released exclusively for the Google Daydream virtual reality glasses, which were discontinued in October 2019.
Meanwhile re-enforced by long-time collaborator Andrew Crawshaw, The Chinese Room was finally bought out by Sumo Digital’s parent company Sumo Group in 2018 for a price of £2.2 million.
Pinchbeck took over as creative director at the newly formed studio, with Curry helping out as an independent composer on a freelance basis. Former employees Ed Daly and John McCormack were rehired as studio and art director respectively. In 2020, the first game under new management followed: (Little Orpheus) is a platformer originally developed for Apple Arcade with (a Metacritic score of 71 points).
In July 2023, co-founder Dan Pinchbeck announced that he was leaving The Chinese Room after 15 years, at the same time a new game from the studio was announced with (Still Wakes the Deep) The Chinese Room. (According to the LinkedIn) platform, 99 employees now work for the company.
With Vampire 2: Bloodlines, Alex Skidmore is calling the shots as Creative Director. Skidmore was most recently lead game designer on the turn-based tactics game Gears Tactics, but previously worked at Lionhead for years on the Fable series.
What do you think of the new development studio? Are you more positive or negative after publisher Paradox Interactive pulled the previous developer Hardsuit Labs from the project? Have you already played games from The Chinese Room? Write us in the comments!
