Paradox removes Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 from Epic Store during its first big sale

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 publisher Paradox has decided to take the game off the Epic Games Store while the sale is ongoing.

Epic dropped a big bomb this week when it revealed the first Epic Games Store sale. The sale itself isn’t that surprising, it’s the fact the company is taking $10 off the price of any game above $15.

This is great news for games already discounted, but it’s even better news for games available to pre-order, many of which are now cheaper than anywhere else. Though Epic stated it’ll be paying the $10 out of pocket – meaning publishers’ cut of sales will be unaffected, not everyone was seemingly on board.

In this case, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 was quickly removed from the store after the sale began. Looking it up through search returns a blank page. The game, like all others listed on EGS, received a discount as a result of the $10 cut, and some even managed to snag it at that low price point.

What many assumed to be an error was later confirmed by Epic; not every publisher is required to participate in sales. Epic told Russian site DTF [Russian] that players who bought the game before it was pulled will continue to own it, and won’t be charged the difference.

However, there remains the question of why Paradox pulled the game in the first place, something other publishers – whose games are also up for pre-order – did not do.

Replying to the DTF story, Epic’s director of publishing strategy Sergey Galyonkin initially said Paradox was “informed in advance about the sale mechanism and was aware of its conditions,” but later retracted that statement when he was made aware that the publisher was not briefed.

Though Galyonkin says the game will return, it’s not clear if this will be cleared up before the sale is over. Seeing as it’s an EGS exclusive, you can presently only pre-order Bloodlines 2 through third-party stores.

This incident got people wondering if the recent disappearance of Ubisoft’s games from the Epic Games Store is somehow connected. Epic says it was due to a problem with Uplay integration, but that didn’t stop people from theorising Ubisoft, too, didn’t want to participate.

From the looks of things, the $10 discount applies to all games above $15 regardless. In other words, the current version of the store may not yet allow Epic to exclude games from similar promotions.

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from VG247 http://bit.ly/2w1rawU