“God of War” Live-Service Game Scrapped

Sony PlayStation has reportedly canceled two previously unannounced live-service games at two of its top subsidiaries according to a breaking report from Bloomberg.

The projects were at Oregon-based Bend Studio and Texas-based Bluepoint Games. Bend Studio worked on PSP and Vita ports and notably created 2019’s underrated “Days Gone”. Bluepoint Games was known for their remastering work for Sony titles, most recently delivering the “Demon’s Souls” remake for PS5.

A company spokesperson confirmed the cancellations, saying the games were canceled “following a recent review” and re-iterated that PlayStation will continue making both online and single-player games.

In addition, they make it clear neither studio will be shuttered – “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.”

In a separate post on Bluesky, the article’s writer and known gaming industry scooper Jason Schreier adds that Bluepoint’s scrapped game was a live-service “God of War” game that had been in development for several years.

Bluepoint had familiarity with the franchise – porting the original “God of War” trilogy from PS3 to PS4, and doing some support work on 2022’s “God of War Ragnarok”.

The news follows on from former PlayStation Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida, who served as president of Worldwide Studios between 2008 and 2019 and left Sony last month, speaking with Kinda Funny about Sony’s push into the live service games arena. He says he would’ve attempted to resist pushes from Sony management to create more live-service games:

“I’m sure they knew it was risky. The chance of a game becoming successful in this hugely competitive genre would be small… Luckily, Helldivers 2 did so well… nobody expected that. So you can’t plan a success in this industry, that’s the most fun part of this business.

I hope that this strategy will work in the end. If I was in the Hermen [Hulst] position, probably I would’ve tried to resist that direction. Maybe that’s one of the reasons they removed me from the first-party!”

Sony had planned to have twelve live service games on PS5 by 2026, but scrapped many of those plans with other cancelled titles based on “Spider-Man” and “The Last of Us”.

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