Summary
- Sony recently took down a Bloodborne 60fps patch and a YouTube video about the PSX demake.
- Lance McDonald speculated in a “copium theory” that this is to prevent Google searches for ‘Bloodborne 60fps’ or ‘Bloodborne remake’ from showing fan-led projects, ahead of an official announcement.
- However, there’s no indication that Sony and FromSoftware are working on anything.
Last week, Sony took down a four-year-old Bloodborne 60fps mod created by Lance McDonald without warning. On Monday, Sony struck again, filing a DMCA notice on an old video about the Bloodborne PSX demake project. As McDonald put it, “What the hell are they doing?”
As reported by IGN, Sony has not commented on either takedown, nor has it touched Bloodborne since The Old Hunters DLC was released in November 2015. These strikes, happening on the year of the game’s anniversary, are incredibly bizarre. But maybe there’s a reason.
If they plan on trademarking ‘Bloodborne 60fps’ and ‘Bloodborne remake’ they need to actually clean up.
In what McDonald admits is a “copium theory”, he speculated that “Sony DMCAed the 60fps patch and the video about the Bloodborne demake so that when they announce a 60fps remake, Google searching for ‘Bloodborne 60fps’ and ‘Bloodborne remake’ won’t have collisions with our fan projects”.
Wishful Thinking, Or Solid Proof?
It’s worth noting that, while these strikes do coincide with the game’s anniversary, and are towards old mods and videos, Sony hasn’t completely left the Bloodborne community alone in the last ten years. Last January, the popular fan-made Bloodborne Kart (developed by Bloodborne PSX demake dev Lilith Walther no less) had to be delayed to remove all references, thus becoming Nightmare Kart.
As McDonald says, the idea that this is for a remake is a “copium theory”, and we’ve seen a lot of those in the last few years. They haven’t amounted to anything yet.
Former SIE Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida speculated that Hidetaka Miyazaki is too “busy” to be working on a Bloodborne remaster, and that he’s highly protective of the game and unlikely to let anyone else work on it. If true, then a remake happening anytime soon seems unlikely.
However, Miyazaki said in 2024 that he knows “for a fact” that other FromSoftware developers would like to see the game get a PC port, and it’s “nothing [he’s] opposed to”. So, while he might want a Bloodborne comeback, it doesn’t appear that anything is happening with the game right now.
That’s not to mention that co-developer Japan Studios shut down in 2021.
Maybe Sony is paving the way for a future remake or remaster, and these are the beginnings of early plans, or maybe MarkScan, the company hired by Sony, is just taking down these community projects because of, well, copyright infringement. Some speculate that it could be a new automated tool, others believe it’s simply to ‘protect’ the IP. The mundane answer seems more likely than the exciting cope, but who knows? Maybe Sony will announce a remaster soon.
- Released
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March 24, 2015
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Violence
- Developer(s)
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From Software
- Genres
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