Summary
- Stellar Blade developer Shift Up just gifted all of its employees a PS5 Pro.
- The studio’s just over 300 employees also received a monetary bonus.
- This comes after Stellar Blade, the studio’s first console game, launched to great success in 2024.
Shift Up, the studio behind Stellar Blade, says it has started the new year by giving all of its workers a bonus. This includes PlayStation 5 Pros for all of its employees, alongside a monetary bonus totalling one million yen (around $32,000).
This comes after Shift Up saw great success in 2023 with the release of Stellar Blade, exclusively on PS5. It was the first console game release for the studio and was met with largely positive reviews, strong sales, and a couple of nominations at The Game Awards.
Stellar Blade Devs Gifts PS5 Pros
Shift Up enters the new year with a bonus for all of its employees
As spotted by VGC, South Korean news outlet Naver reported on this bonus earlier today. The bonus came as part of the studio’s “Shift Up Rise Up” ceremony, held for its staff. As the outlet reports, the last employee count at Shift Up was 311 – so that’s a lot of PS5 Pros if most, if not all, employees were getting one.
The gift does make a lot of sense – Stellar Blade is one of the games that has been optimised for PS5 Pro so far.
A representative from Shift Up commented on the bonuses, saying, “The plus and bonus payments are for the purpose of encouraging talent”.
It makes a nice change from the usual stories we hear from the industry, in which even a game’s success can lead to layoffs or even full studio closures. We saw this time and time again throughout 2024, with industry giants like Sony and Microsoft continuously laying off developers across their various studios.
Right now, Stellar Blade is only available on PS5, although a PC port is coming at some point this year. There’s been no word at all on an Xbox port, so either a deal with Sony is getting in the way of that, or the team doesn’t want to deal with the Xbox Series S, since other developers are struggling to get their games on there now.
Stellar Blade is an action-driven game from Shift Up, originally revealed as Project Eve. It follows the aforementioned Eve as she battles the alien Naytiba invaders, in a bid to reclaim the Earth for humanity.