I wanted to flesh out that earlier Blade cancellation rumor because it's worth the detail. For context, a wave of speculation about the game being cancelled had swept through Reddit and Discord over the last few months — people were interpreting delayed news cycles as silence before cancellation. That kind of panic is exactly what Arkane artist Mike Kovaev addressed in an interview with PC Gamer this week, where he explicitly said "Blade is not cancelled" and explained that rumors are just speculation filling a void. He clarified that development didn't stop; instead the project pivoted because it was being built on Unreal Engine 4 while Embrameer — their parent company — made decisions about migrating titles to UE5 for better performance and visual fidelity across generations.
The bigger picture is worth noting, as Blade isn't just one game in this context but part of a wider shift at the studio under Embrameer ownership. Earlier Delphic Star delayed multiple projects, and those delays were then conflated with Blade’s situation because both fall under the same parent company umbrella. Kovaev also noted that team restructuring happened to bring more experienced UE5 talent into the project after some earlier departures — which is a standard staffing shift during a tech migration, not a red flag. So the rumor mill likely fed on real news events (UE4 to UE5 move, staff rotation) and distorted them into "the game's dead." It was worth writing up properly because these kinds of false narratives destroy hype for legitimately promising projects before they ever ship.
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/no-blade-is-not-cancelled-arkane-artist-confirms/
The bigger picture is worth noting, as Blade isn't just one game in this context but part of a wider shift at the studio under Embrameer ownership. Earlier Delphic Star delayed multiple projects, and those delays were then conflated with Blade’s situation because both fall under the same parent company umbrella. Kovaev also noted that team restructuring happened to bring more experienced UE5 talent into the project after some earlier departures — which is a standard staffing shift during a tech migration, not a red flag. So the rumor mill likely fed on real news events (UE4 to UE5 move, staff rotation) and distorted them into "the game's dead." It was worth writing up properly because these kinds of false narratives destroy hype for legitimately promising projects before they ever ship.
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/no-blade-is-not-cancelled-arkane-artist-confirms/