The Bloodborne PSX demake has become the latest Bloodborne-related fan project to be hit with a copyright claim after the Bloodborne 60fps mod was struck last week.
Well-known Bloodborne 60fps mod creator Lance McDonald announced last week that he’d received a takedown notification on behalf of Sony Interactive Entertainment “asking that I remove links to the patch I posted on the internet, so I’ve now done so.” The DMCA takedown arrived four years after the mod was released.
Now, Lilith Walther, creator of Nightmare Kart, which was previously known as Bloodborne Kart, and the eye-catching Bloodborne PSX demake, tweeted to say a YouTube video of the demake was hit with a copyright claim by a company called MarkScan Enforcement.
McDonald followed up to tweet that MarkScan are a company hired by Sony Interactive Entertainment, and the same company that “DMCAed my page about the Bloodborne 60fps patch.”
“And now they’ve DMCAed an old video about the Bloodborne PSX demake project. That’s pretty wild. What the hell are they doing??”
Bloodborne is of course one of the biggest conundrums in the video game industry. The FromSoftware masterpiece launched on PS4 to critical and commercial acclaim, but since then Sony hasn’t touched it. Fans are desperate for an official next-gen patch that would make the game run at 60fps, up from 30fps, but there are also calls for a remaster and a sequel.
Recently, fans managed to get PS4 emulators to deliver something akin to a remaster on PC. The tech experts at Digital Foundry released a video covering “a breakthrough in PS4 emulation” via ShadPS4, which means Bloodborne is now fully playable start to finish in 60fps. Could this breakthrough have triggered an aggressive response from Sony? IGN has asked Sony for comment, but it has yet to respond.
McDonald offered what he called his “copium theory,” though: that Sony could be working on an official remake.
“My copium theory is 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,” McDonald said.
“Let me cope.”
Then: “Like if they plan on trademarking ‘bloodborne 60fps’ and ‘Bloodborne remake’ they need to actually clean up in order to actually file a trademark request. Right??”
Despite these latest aggressive actions by Sony, the company has so far offered no indication that it plans to return to Bloodborne in any way. Last month, former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida delivered his Bloodborne no-show theory in an interview with Kinda Funny Games:
“Bloodborne has always been the most asked thing,” Yoshida began. “And people wonder why we haven’t really done anything, even an update or a remaster. Should be easy, right? The company is known for doing so many remasters, right, some people get frustrated.
“I have only my personal theory to that situation. I left first-party so I don’t know what’s going on, but my theory is, you know because I remember, you know, Miyazaki-san really, really loved Bloodborne, you know, what he created. So I think he is interested, but he’s so successful and he’s so busy, so he doesn’t want, he cannot do himself, but he does not want anyone else to touch it. So that’s my theory. And the PlayStation team respect his wish. So that’s my guess, right? Theory. I am not revealing any secret information, to be clear.”
The upshot is Bloodborne remains dormant nearly 10 years after the first game came out. But is there hope? In interviews, Miyazaki often deflects questions about Bloodborne, pointing to the fact FromSoftware does not own the IP. But in February last year, Miyazaki at least admitted the game would benefit from a release on more modern hardware.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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