Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma is no longer available on Steam or the PlayStation Store.
Publisher Versus Evil has decided to cancel its episodic PlayStation 4 and PC action-adventure after just one of its three volumes. In an unusual move, it’s withdrawn the title from sale and is refunding anyone who bought it. General manager Steve Escalante told CGMagazine, “The game was a failure. We could not do, in good conscience, volume two and volume three.”
Back in June, the digital-distribution platform Steam implemented a refund policy for people unhappy with their purchases, but it’s not normally so easy to get a refund on Sony’s PlayStation Store. Versus Evil obviously had to jump through some hoops to work out an automated refund process with Sony, and funds are already appearing back in people’s store accounts.
“It’s been a long process to figure it out because Sony has never really had to do this in this way,” said Escalante, “but we’re returning all the money. So across the board, we’re putting out an apology saying, ‘Sorry about this.’”
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Afro Samurai 2 is riddled with bugs, according to many reviews, and it’s sitting on a Metacritic score of just 21. “That Afro Samurai 2’s first episode gets so much wrong in such a small amount of time speaks volumes about its laundry list of problems,” said PlayStation Universe.
Escalante, though, says the decision to cancel the title — which features an original story by American Sniper writer Jim DeFelice and an original soundtrack from producer and rapper RZA — after one volume is because people really didn’t like the game. “If you look at the reviews, it wasn’t that the game was broken or buggy; people just didn’t like it,” he said.
