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Sony has canceled two unannounced live service games that were being developed at Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games, both subsidiaries. One of the canceled games was a God of War live service game.
There are no plans to close either Bend or Bluepoint, according to a statement made by a Sony spokesperson. “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,” they told Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier.
PlayStation did not say whether the cancellations will lead to layoffs but did say the studios will not close. A spokesperson for PlayStation tells Bloomberg the company is working with Bend and Bluepoint to determine their next projects
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier.bsky.social) 2025-01-16T23:13:09.439Z
Sony did not confirm whether or not the game cancellations would lead to layoffs within Bluepoint or Bend. In a memo seen by Bloomberg, Sony said it’s “working closely with Bend and Bluepoint to determine what are the next projects and plan to do everything we can to ensure there is minimal business impact.”
The challenge of live service games
2024 is a year that showed just how fickle the realm of live service games can be.
Helldivers 2 launched as Sony’s most successful ever Steam launch and still has a weekly high player count of over 80,000 players on Steam almost a year post-launch according to SteamDB, with many more players on the PlayStation 5.
Even this huge success was not smooth sailing – Helldivers 2 faced multiple rounds of review bombing as a result of updates players weren’t happy with, particularly a requirement Sony later backtracked on to link a PSN account to Steam in order to play the game.
On the opposite end of the scale is the absolute flop that was Concord. Live for just two weeks after its disappointing launch, Sony pulled the plug on Concord, refunded anyone who had purchased the game, and closed Firewalk Studios.
This challenging environment makes the cancellations unsurprising. Even for an IP as popular as God of War (which ReadWrite named one of the top PS4 games to play in 2024) launching a successful live service game is a huge challenge and risks damaging the reputation of the IP if it were to fail.
Featured image credit: Sony
