Gaming

Devs Learned About PS5 Live Service Game Cancellations From News Report

admin January 20, 2025

Summary

Sony canceled projects at Bend and Bluepoint Games without informing the developers, causing uncertainty among staff.
Shuhei Yoshida would have resisted Hermen Hult’s live service push if still in charge.
Studios now face difficulty pitching new games to Sony due to project cancellations and unclear priorities.

Just a few days ago, a report surfaced in which Sony confirmed that the company had canceled two live service projects from two of its first-party studios, Bend and Bluepoint Games.

It seems the time we heard about the project cancelations is also the same time the devs who were actually working on the projects heard about it too.

Shuhei Yoshida Said He’d Resist PlayStation Live Service Push If He Was Still In Charge

Former SIE president Shuhei Yoshida said he would have resisted Hermen Hult’s live service push.

Bend Studio, Bluepoint Game Devs Apparently Didn’t Know Their Projects Were Canceled

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According to a report from Jeff Grub in his latest Game Mess Mornings video show (via VGC), the staff working on the games only found out about their projects being canceled when the report came to light.

According to Grubb, “Yeah, all this is true. The two studios found out at the same time as everyone else, so people will be going into work today wondering ‘hey, okay, what are we doing next? And what they’re going to have to do next, very likely, is pitch something to Sony, and the landscape of that has changed pretty drastically.”

Grubb also mentioned that both studios will now have a harder time pitching new games to Sony since the failure of Concord and the closure of other live service projects mean it’s not exactly clear what type of new games the company is looking to approve.

“A couple of years ago you’d bring to PlayStation your pitch, that is: ‘It’s a live service game, we know you want to hear that. And can we use the God of War IP? We know you want to hear that.’ And then they get the green light, and they get budget, they get funding, they can grow their studio, hire more people, the people working there are safe. And now they have to go back to the drawing board, and come up with a pitch that PlayStation wants to hear, when no one really knows what they want to hear, and so it’s a rough situation,” Grubb explains.

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If true, this might be one of the worst things to hear that your project is being shelved. I mean, would it have really been that hard for someone at Sony to send an email to the studio’s general manager?

For now, the current known live service games under development by Sony’s first-party studios are Guerrilla Games’ multiplayer game based on the Horizon franchise, and Bungie’s Marathon. While Sony does have one big live service game that made it big in Helldivers 2, Concord’s massive failings perhaps woke Sony up to the fact that chasing trends all for the sake of live service revenue isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.