Sony’s Bend Studio has had layoffs, as confirmed by some of the employees who were let go themselves.
Two weeks ago, Sony announced that they had cancelled two live service games in production by Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games. While fans associate Bluepoint with remakes and remasters of Sony’s games, they did reveal that they were shifting directions towards making original games.
Given Bluepoint’s good reputation for ports and remasters, they were likely in good standing in Sony. Bend Studio doesn’t have as good a reputation, having not made an original title since 2019’s Days Gone.
The live service title that Bend Studio was making for Sony offered hope that they could show their value to the company with a potentially more profitable venture. Sony’s cancellation of that title suggested that the project was not turning out well, and Bend did not reveal they had other projects in the works.
As reported by GameDeveloper, Bend Studio’s former employees say that they “made the decision to prematurely rescind all ongoing contracts except for a select few that will be hired full time.”
What’s also disturbing about this report is that these laid off employees were working on level design and system design. While Sony could have also laid off employees at other divisions, and we don’t know the full reasons for these decisions, these choices are a bad signal. Because they indicate that Sony is uninterested or disappointed in Bend Studio’s game design and creative output.
With Sony itself undergoing a management shakeup, this may simply be a continuation of Sony reassessing their workforce and making those decisions to compensate for lower revenues coming from first party software. This is certainly part of a wider trend across the industry, but the particulars of this situation simply don’t bode well for Bend Studio.
Since Sony hasn’t shut down the studio outright, they may still see value in Bend. But we wonder if they will shift Bend’s focus from making their original titles, to becoming a support studio. Sony would definitely find use for more hands working at upcoming first party titles from their other bigger studios and franchises, such as Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet or Santa Monica Studio’s potential upcoming God Of War game.
But if anything, we would tell Days Gone fans that they should put any hopes for a sequel far out of their minds at this point. Hopefully, Bend finds their way to a new direction that would benefit them, Sony, and their fans.
