Bloober Team, the studio behind the highly anticipated Silent Hill 2 Remake, has announced a deal with Skybound Entertainment, the publishers of The Walking Dead comics. Read on to learn about the deal and more.
Bloober Team Partners with Skybound Entertainment for New Horror Game
Project ‘R’ Set to Release in 2025
Bloober Team, the Polish studio currently behind the long-awaited Silent Hill 2 Remake(SH2R), has recently signed a licensing and publishing agreement with Skybound Entertainment, the publishers of “The Walking Dead” and “Invincible” comics.
In a PR release by Bloober Team, they reveal that the studio “will create a game, code name R, based on an IP owned by Skybound.” No other information about the deal or the potential game has been disclosed, but the project is scheduled to release in 2025.
Piotr Babieno, the CEO of Bloober team, shares his thoughts about the deal. “This project is another step in our 2nd party strategy, where we work with external partners to provide our horror know-how. These are not titles that are meant to give us only financial profit but are the next steps in achieving our strategy by the end of 2027.” He affirms that both Bloober Team and Skybound Entertainment “have been friends for a long time,” and he’s sure that this will be a successful partnership.
Bloober Team is still preoccupied with the development of SH2R, but Babieno is optimistic about the future. “The end of the year is extremely busy for us. But it is also the jubilee year, the celebration of which we have recently begun and we want to celebrate it at the right pace. I think we will be surprised.”
The public has not been privy to much information about SH2R aside from the initial teaser trailer announcement. Last November, Bloober Team reassured fans that development is progressing smoothly and as planned.
Bloober Team Horror Track Record
How The Studio Tackles Mental Health Has Fans Worried and Divided
Bloober Team has a growing list of horror games under its belt, but every title has been the subject of criticism for its story writing. More particularly, how the studio depicts mental health and trauma in their games, making use of overdone horror tropes found in films, shows, and other media.
Vic Hood from TechRadar Gaming wrote an excellent piece detailing the repeated problematic glorifications of mental disorders in Bloober Team’s projects. She puts Layers of Fear, Blair Witch, and The Medium under a magnifying glass and dissects their harmful portrayals.
CONTENT WARNING for: suicide, physical abuse, sexual abuse, child abuse.
The three games share a common subtle microaggression towards those who suffer from poor mental health, and it’s that their trauma would always lead to more trauma. Layers of Fear follows a protagonist suffering from hallucinations who abuses his wife leading to her eventual suicide.
The Medium’s main antagonist was a monstrous manifestation of the protagonist’s sister who was sexually abused as a child. To stop the monster, the sister must die, suggesting that victims “are broken and irreparable.” Distastefully, it’s later revealed that the person who sexually abused the sister was himself a child sexual abuse victim, further perpetuating the subtle belief of the abused producing abusers.
This track record worried fans for Silent Hill 2 Remake, as it has very heavy themes of mental illness and trauma. At the hands of a studio with such a divisive track record in depicting mental health, many are very skeptical if Bloober Team might make changes as they wish. Only time will tell as fans patiently and anxiously await the official release date of SH2R, and if the essence of the original will even remain.
Sources:
Bloober Team with a new agreement with Skybound!
Bloober Team still can't get mental health right
Here's Why Silent Hill Fans Really Don't Like The Medium
