Blue Box Game Studios has quietly deleted all hints of an imminent playable demo for Abandoned

Update

Since we reported on this situation this morning, Blue Box Game Studios has posted a statement regarding rumors that Abandoned has been canceled. It explains that the game hasn’t been canceled, but that the Q1 2022 window was far too ambitious for the studio. It’s apologized to fans and hopes they can wait until Abandoned: Prologue is ready for them to try in the Realtime Experience on PS5.

Original article

Abandoned was first announced for PlayStation 5 in April 2021. Since then, the game and its developer, Blue Box Studios, have had a rough time. Many theories sprouted up about the game being a Silent Hill remake with Hideo Kojima at the helm, and fans were disappointed when the gameplay teaser that was so heavily promoted ended up being five or so seconds of cinematic footage. Now, it appears as though the studio has gone back to remove all mention of the game’s upcoming playable demo.

Lance McDonald, best known for his videos on FromSoftware’s games and hidden content within them, today pointed out how all posts on Twitter discussing the imminent demo are now gone. In addition, any other specific plans for the future that mention brought dates or timelines have also been removed.

Having been through Blue Box Studios Twitter profile, it certainly seems like there’s nothing to say that a playable version of the game is due anytime soon. However, given how regularly the studio posted last year, particularly around the time of updates for its Realtime Experience, it does seem like some posts are missing. Most notable is the absence of the teaser that sparked the Silent Hill theories.

The studio’s last update on the game was Christmas Eve 2021 when it published a blog post saying that Q1 2022 would be an exciting year for Abandoned. We’re almost at the end of that Q1 window now, and so far, we’ve seen nothing.

McDonald discusses how Sony assigns all indie developers a certain marketing budget, which is why Abandoned was shown so early in development. He adds that the studio probably blew that marketing budget early on, and now there’s nothing left to help market the game almost a year later, but we can’t confirm if this is accurate.

What’s clear is that the situation is frustrating for the developers working on Abandoned. Around the same time as the Christmas Eve update, Blue Box Studios Founder Hasan Kahraman took to Twitter to explain his feelings, insist that Abandoned will be ready when it’s ready, and give the team the space it needs to finish it without the toxicity it’s attracted.