It looks like Firesprite Games is back on track.
When Sony announced layoffs across PlayStation last February, Firesprite Games was one of many studios subject to restructuring. Firesprite was founded by some people from Psygnosis, and made games like Run Sackboy Run, and more recently, Horizon: Call of the Mountain.
Unfortunately, some shocking revelations came out from a Eurogamer report. The report claims that Sony had meddled in the company while they were making Horizon: Call of the Mountain, forcing some of the management to quit. Sony then brought in people from the studio XDev to take over management duties, and that new leadership was accused of fostering a toxic culture in the studio.
Sony and Firesprite had never publicly acknowledged these rumors, and in June Firesprite officially announced that they were no longer laying off workers.
As reported by TheGamer, Firesprite now has new job openings for a new game described as “a dark, story-driven ‘Narrative Adventure’.” Other descriptions of the project from these job openings refer to it as a AAA production, with photorealistic graphics, and focus on creating a cinematic experience with particular focus on audio design.
These descriptions line up with earlier reports that Firesprite is working on a horror game. Now, some of you may have forgotten this, but these were not rumors. Firesprite posted job openings for a similar sounding project all the way back in March 2022.
That’s nearly a year before Horizon: Call of the Mountain was released, so it sounds like this was something that was already in their pipeline years ago. So why are we only seeing the job openings now?
Well, obviously, PlayStation’s state at the start of this year led to layoffs and other measures, across companies and regions. While even very successful PlayStation owned studios like Insomniac Games was not spared, it was clear that Firesprite Games, whose Horizon: Call of the Mountain did not do well, would also be affected.
It’s likely that Firesprite would have brought some of these job openings up earlier if it wasn’t for the consultation period where Sony reevaluated their business. But, it’s also hard to ignore that it’s possible some of the people who were harmed by Firesprite’s alleged toxic work culture were also let go.
We can only refer to these possibilities as speculation, as once again, no one has gone on record to publicly confirm Eurogamer’s report from March. If not Sony or Firesprite, one of their employees could have gone public, perhaps with plans for legal action.
That could still happen, but for now, we hope the best for Firesprite Games’ employees, and yes, we are rooting for their next project and their future success.
