Sony Bend Studio has confirmed that 30% of staff have been let go following the studio’s recent cancellation of yet another live service game developed under former CEO Jim Ryan’s vision.
The news comes from Bloomberg, who originally broke the story, but soon after the report went live, Bend Studio confirmed the layoffs in a post on social media. The post says that the studio said goodbye to “incredibly talented teammates as we transition to our next project”.
According to Bloomberg, the studio has laid off 40 staff members in total, which marks a 30% staff reduction.
Sony Bend Studio has been going through a rough patch. The studio’s last game was Days Gone back in 2019. It recently remastered the zombie game for PS5, but apart from that title, the studio hasn’t released anything else.
Sony recently confirmed that Bend Studio was working on a live service game, which was cancelled a few years into development. This cancelled game was likely the 2021 project that was announced by the studio as a “deep open-world game using systems developed in Days Gone”.
Bloomberg says that Bend Studio is now “spinning up a new project following the cancellation,” but we don’t know what this game is and when we’ll see it.
Bend Studio’s live service game joined the ever-growing list of other Sony-made live service games which have been cancelled in recent years. The total list is currently on 12 games in total. The list only includes cancelled games that have been made public.
Source: Bloomberg / Bend Studio
