Employees of Sony’s social media department made a mistake, which later became a media boomerang. It’s not a new thing for Sony to overlook one of FromSoftware’s best releases, as it’s been haunting gamers for nearly a decade. However, Bloodborne’s recent exclusion from the “Best PlayStation Games” voting on X didn’t sit well with many players.
From March 11 Sony conducts a poll on X (formerly Twitter) called “What is the best PlayStation game?” The list, compiled by Sony’s social team, included both major projects from internal PlayStation studios, such as Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, God of War and Gran Turismo 7, as well as games created under the auspices of Sony Interactive Entertainment, such as Death Stranding and Returnal. Scrolling through the list of 16 contenders for the title of “game that dominates the PlayStation”, the absence of Bloodborne is striking, which did not go unnoticed by many fans of the action-RPG masterpiece from FromSoftware and SCE Japan Studio, not least due to the presence of a remake Demon’s Souls, among others. Of course, players on the Bloodborne subreddit, who are still fervently praying to all the deities for a remake, remaster or PC port, did not take this information lightly, and Sony’s silence only made things worse.
It is therefore no coincidence that Sony’s post was criticized by many Bloodborne fans for the lack of games on the PlayStation list worthy of participation in this special “social tournament”. So far, more than 1,700 people have responded to the message Sony posted on social media, and countless more comments on individual posts, reflecting the full range of emotions of those who rightly question the reasons for such frivolity. “They don’t even remember Bloodborne exists”, says a Reddit thread on March 15. The user who responded noted how bad it is when Sony makes a selection of several parts of one franchise and leaves out the most desired Souls game for the fandom. “You know how bad it is when the same franchise is played twice, or even three times. And in the case of Spider-Man, this is already three games.”, he wrote. In another Reddit thread, a Bloodborne fan asked the community to politely stop reminding him of Sony’s ignorance towards the game. “Yeah I know, Reddit Alerts”he wrote. “Please stop reminding me of this.”
The whole situation with Sony and Bloodborne is reminiscent of Valve’s position or lack thereof regarding Half-Life 3 or Episode 3. They have been silent for over a decade, and the last update to the game came out in 2012. Bloodborne’s DLC, The Old Hunters, came out in 2015 and hasn’t been heard from since. Recently, FromSoftware head Hidetaka Miyazaki said that he is glad that people are so eager to see a remake, remaster or port of Bloodborne, but it all depends on Sony, which currently owns the IP.
