HomeNewsParanoia: Happiness Is Mandatory
Paranoia: Happiness Is Mandatory has been secretly pulled from saleWhich one of you did this?
Which one of you did this?
After launching on December 10th,Paranoia: Happiness Is Mandatoryhas, at some point in the past few weeks, been pulled from sale without warning or explanation. Based on the tabletop role ‘em up Paranoia, the dystopian RPG launched as an Epic Games Store timed exclusive in December then vanished in… late January? Early February? The game is gone, and no one even said that it was going. Epic pointed us towards the publishers for answers. The publishers have not replied to us. This is the point in Paranoia where people would be blaming their squadmates, outing them as subversives, decrying them as mutants, and generally sucking up to the computer overseer.
The why is a big mystery. The game isn’t great (ourParanoia: Happiness Is Mandatory reviewnoted that it’s disappointing as a staid singleplayer adaptation of a tabletop game which thrives on wild collaborative storytelling and treachery) but most of Bigben’s games aren’t great. They mostly release licensed sports game, with a few adaptations like this andWH40K: Inquisitor - Martyr. And Paranoia needed some patching, but so do most games when they launch. Paranoia does not seem like a game so bad Bigben would pull it of their own volition.
Could it be a dispute with Paranoia’s owners? Between Bigben and the game’s developers? Or an issue with Epic? Dunno! No one’s saying anything. A complete blackout, saying nothing to players nor press, would suggest to me that someone’s lawyers have called for silence. But since no one’s saying owt, that’s just a guess.
Paranoia’s Steam pageis still up, still saying it’ll launch on Valve’s store in 2020. I have no idea if that will go ahead nor if it will return to the Epic store.
