Bend Studio has confirmed they have held a new round of layoffs.
Word first spread from Jason Schreier, who shared this claim on Bluesky:
Sony’s Bend studio, which canceled a live-service game earlier this year, is laying off 30% of staff today (around 40 people), Bloomberg News has learned. The studio has been spinning up a new project following the cancellation.
Sony officially announced they were cancelling both Bend Studios’ and Bluepoint Games’ live service games at the start of this year. While Bend Studios reassured fans that they were ‘not going away,’ we did confirm that there were layoffs in the studio a few days later.
That confirmation came from former Bend employees at the end of January. Today, Bend Studio shared this statement concerning today’s announced layoffs:
Today, we said goodbye to some incredibly talented teammates as we transition to our next project. We’re deeply thankful for their contributions as they’ve shaped who we are, and their impact will always be part of our story.
This is a difficult moment for our team, but we hold immense respect for everyone who got us here. As we move forward, we remain committed to building the future of Bend Studio with creativity, passion, and innovation in the titles we craft.
While the latest Bend Studio game that comes to mind is Days Gone, Bend’s creative and commercial peaks was undisputably the Syphon Filter franchise, as they made the first game for the PlayStation in 1999, and went on to produce seven titles overall through the 2000s. They were also positioned to be a dedicated portable developer for the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita.
It may be easy to forget this, but the PlayStation layoffs, which they announced would commence in February 2024, have kept going at a rapid pace. This year we reported on unannounced layoffs in PlayStation divisions outside of the game studios, and then layoffs in one such studio, PlayStation Visual Arts.
While some gamers will be eager to connect this to Sony’s faltering live service push, but we need to view an even bigger picture. It can no longer be disputed that PlayStation has an internal crisis, even if they’re not talking about it in public.
The ongoing series of layoffs seems similar to what Embracer Group went through over the past two years. Sony has worked harder to keep their projects under wraps, but they seem to be going through a similar process of reevaluating each studio & project for their potential viability, and slashing down studios and projects accordingly.
Many of the studios they closed last year, such as the historically significant PlayStation London Studio, were not announced to have any live service games in development. Sony seems to be moving to a similar position to Fellowship FKA Embracer, where they will become a considerably smaller publisher than they were just three years ago. As we’ve seen with Insomniac Games, Sony having one of the highest selling video game consoles, and being one of the biggest platforms for game, isn’t enough to protect or save their position as a publisher.
We wish the best for the developers leaving Sony Bend Studio, and hope they can find placement back in the video game industry.
