CG writes: Developer Black Shamrock and Cyanide Studios released their CRPG Paranoia Happiness is Mandatory on PC late last year. The release seemed liked a muted affair with little-to-no marketing behind it. So if you missed it, it’s available now via the Epic Games Store. We saw the game in action earlier in 2019 during our visit to Gamescom and came away impressed. However, now we have had time to fully digest the full retail game is it worthy of your time?
Do you remember Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory? This game which many believed lost has now made a quiet comeback.
From PC Gamer: "Two years ago, Orwellian sci-fi RPG Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory was removed from sale within weeks of its release. The reason for its delisting has remained a mystery, but a set of court documents unearthed by Gamekult shed light on the situation.
The court documents detail a complaint lodged by publisher Bigben Interactive, AKA Nacon, against Paranoia's rights-holders in October of 2021. Greg Costikyan and Eric Goldberg, two of the creators of the Paranoia tabletop RPG, are named in the complaint, which is apparently about a breach of a license agreement.
PC Gamer has obtained Costikyan and Goldberg's answer to the complaint and counterclaim of their own, which was filed in United States District Court in the Southern District of New York on March 11. According to this document, the trouble began when Bigben published a press release announcing a release date of September 10, 2019, without Costikyan and Goldberg's approval, and in spite of "their concern about advertising a potentially unrealistic release date". "
Chris Wootton of GameGrin reviews Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory, writing: "The world in which Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory is set is a dark future in which we have successfully nuked ourselves to death and the few remaining people live in underground complexes. All so fine and dandy and very Fallout. Unfortunately, when the bombs dropped, the massive AI that runs the show was only partly finished, its memory had only been filled with events up to the McCarthy era in the USA and as such was obsessed with "reds under the beds". This has resulted in friend Computer being worried about Communists, treason, secret societies, and the possibility of mutation in the populace over which it stands guardian."
