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Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night for Linux has been officially cancelled

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Sad news for fans of action platformers, as Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night for Linux has been officially cancelled.

Bloodstained was crowdfunded on Kickstarter back in June of 2015, with that they managed to gain $5.5 million dollars. During the campaign, they confirmed Linux was going to be a supported platform, they even told us they were aiming for a simultaneous release.

However, that's all changed now. Sharing the news in a Kickstarter update posted today, they said this:

In this update, we have a very important announcement to make.  Bloodstained will no longer be supported on Mac and Linux. We have made this tough decision due to challenges of supporting middleware and online feature support and making sure we deliver on the rest of the scope for the game. We will be offering backers who planned to play the game on Mac and Linux the option to change the platform of their order. If you would like to change your platform, please send an email with your new platform request from the email address associated with your Kickstarter pledge. We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and we hope for your understanding.

So not only are they cancelling the Linux version, they're seemingly not offering a refund and only allowing you the option to change your platform. I had to wipe my glasses and read it again to be sure! A refund simply isn't mentioned, only the chance to change your platform.

I didn't personally fund this one, so I don't have any personal grudges or anything like that. Even so, I find this extremely poor, to put it rather lightly. I just can't believe my eyes, given they had over eleven times their original funding goal!

I've added it to our dedicated page tracking individual crowdfunding projects, with 150 projects that puts individual projects that promise Linux support at around 89% that deliver.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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melkemind Dec 27, 2018
Maybe I'm just hoping for the best, but this seems like just an omission or maybe bad English. Why would they need to offer you the option to change your platform if the alternative option wasn't a refund? If there were no second option, the wording would be, "Mac and Linux users will receive the Windows version instead." I could be wrong, of course.
Alm888 Dec 27, 2018
Quoting: Shmerl
Quoting: Alm888Paying for soundtrack is dumb, IMO.

I usually try to extract the soundtrack from games, as you can see in some scripts I posted here (see older pages there as well).

However, games naturally usually ship sound with lossy codec (no reason to use lossless), and I always like to get it in lossless FLAC as well, which I usually encode in Opus for playback. So I don't mind paying for lossless release at all. But I prefer it to be provided through some convenient stores like GOG and Bandcamp.

Well, there is no denial that BandCamp is awesome, that's for sure! :D
But my situation is reversed. Most of the time games ship their soundtracks in OGG/Vorbis format (due to easily available royalty-free decoding libs) and shove crappy MP3's as standalone soundtracks (they just assume that's what general audience wants). FLAC is too disk-heavy for my taste.
It is entirely different story when the separate soundtrack also includes bonus tracks not used in the game or expanded versions. But one can not be sure with Kickstarter: there are almost always no preliminary description on what stores or in what quality/quantity the soundtrack will be provided. Sorry, no "iTunes" or "Google Music" DRM for me!
MichaelTunnell Dec 27, 2018
This is why I never back games on Kickstarter. This has happened so many times even when they get an insane amount of money they screw Linux users. After it happened once it guaranteed I will never back another game on Kickstarter.
Smoke39 Dec 27, 2018
Quoting: melkemindMaybe I'm just hoping for the best, but this seems like just an omission or maybe bad English. Why would they need to offer you the option to change your platform if the alternative option wasn't a refund? If there were no second option, the wording would be, "Mac and Linux users will receive the Windows version instead." I could be wrong, of course.
The other options besides Windows would be the various console versions.
elmapul Dec 27, 2018
Quoting: Whitewolfe80MMM So no refunds just more of this come on guys dont you own a good platform type of mentality that some developers have. We are not out of 2018 yet and this just more bad news in a year of terrible cancellations and delays for previously promised linux games. Should be used to it by now, maybe time to become a console peasant esh doesnt appeal but better than going back to dual booting.

being an console peasant is not an option on my country (Brazil), the games for consoles and consoles are to expensive and i need an computer anyway (to work and etc) , i dont need an console.

i recomend those who already got the game and will chose other verion to down vote it.


Last edited by elmapul on 27 December 2018 at 11:26 pm UTC
emphy Dec 27, 2018
Normally I am quite forgiving in these sorts of cases. As they say, shit happens.

However, this is a big project that has also had funding from other sources and is likely to profit well after release. There's enough high quality porting services available which should be well within budget to have only a small impact on profit margins (or even easily break even on fulfilling the pledge).

The second major problem is with the lack of a refund option. Shit may well happen, but one should not leave ones mess lying around. This project did handle their (imo, much more understandable) wiiu version cancellation properly. There's absolutely no excuse for not just copy-pasta-ing the message they used for that case, with the proper modifications.


Last edited by emphy on 27 December 2018 at 11:47 pm UTC
Exidan Dec 28, 2018
not surprised at all. All of their videos of the game show a very unpolished product, like a really early alfa. And the game is way overdue. they are clearly inexperienced devs that got hype because of a game they didn't make. Shame that this flopped, really, but this year was a good year for metroidvanias.
omer666 Dec 28, 2018
Maybe I should mail them to ask for an alternative game to give my money to. (Because obviously, it won't be theirs...)

That's a real shame because they had Castlevania's creator on board, I really wanted to play this.
orochi_kyo Dec 28, 2018
Just reading comments on kickstarter page, some people could be right... this middleware could be DENUVO and Im pretty sure their next announcement will be delaying the GOG version or even cancelling it.
Shmerl Dec 28, 2018
Quoting: orochi_kyoJust reading comments on kickstarter page, some people could be right... this middleware could be DENUVO and Im pretty sure their next announcement will be delaying the GOG version or even cancelling it.

That would be strange, given that GOG already lists the game. It means they agreed to release it DRM-free there.
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