Questions about Sony’s live-service plans continue to mount. The company confirmed two games were canceled at Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games, responding to a report by Bloomberg that the PlayStation 5 maker had canned two projects were part of the company’s ongoing multiplayer push. Neither studio will be closed, but layoffs could still be on the way. One of the games was reportedly a live-service spin-off of the hit God of War franchise.
The games were killed following a recent internal review, a Sony spokesperson confirmed to Bloomberg. “Bend and Bluepoint are highly accomplished teams who are valued members of the PlayStation Studios family, and we are working closely with each studio to determine what are the next projects,” the person said. They also said that Sony will continue to make both single-player and multiplayer games. Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier confirmed on social media that the canceled Bluepoint project was a live service God of War spin-off.
Bend Studio is best known for the open-world zombie shooter Days Gone, while Bluepoint, acquired by Sony as recently as 2021, was responsible for the recent well-received PS5 remake of Demon’s Souls. While neither project was officially announced, previous leaks suggested Bend was working on a multiplayer game with a military shooter aesthetic. Alleged images from the game appeared online last month before being taken down by Sony via a DMCA notice. Prior to Days Gone, Bend was best known for the espionage shooter series Syphon Filter.
The cancelation of Bluepoint’s God of War spin-off, meanwhile, would make it the second high-profile live-service project based on a major PlayStation franchise to be killed in recent years. Back in 2023, Sony also shutdown a highly-anticipated Last Of Us multiplayer game called Last of Us Online. Naughty Dog claimed at the time that the decision not to move forward with the project was because the studio didn’t want to become solely obsessed with maintaining a live-service game, as arguably happened with Bungie in recent years.
Back in 2023, then-PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan promised 12 live-service games by 2025. Over Half of those have now been reportedly canceled or, in the case of Concord, un-released. The over-$200 million flop has seemingly been part of a major internal re-evaluation of Sony’s multiplayer development strategy. While Helldivers 2 turned out to be one of last year’s biggest surprise hits, the live-service push has so far yielded many more failures than success stories.
For now, multiplayer spin-offs of the sci-fi open-world action series Horizon Zero Dawn appear some of the few left standing within Sony’s first-party portfolio, which is currently led by the former head of the studio that made the series, Hermen Hulst. A Monster Hunter-style multiplayer Horizon spin-off and a possible MMO are both believed to currently be in production, and potentially nearing release in the next year or two.
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