Bend Studio Vows to Create More Cool Stuff Post-Sony Live Service Cancellation

The developer behind *Days Gone*, Bend Studio, remains committed to creating innovative content despite Sony's recent cancellation of their unannounced live-service game. Last week, Sony pulled the plug on two live-service projects, one from Bend Studio and the other from Bluepoint Games. While details about Bend Studio's game remain under wraps, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reported that Bluepoint was working on a live-service title linked to the *God of War* franchise. A Sony spokesperson confirmed these cancellations to Bloomberg, reassuring that both studios will continue to operate and collaborate on future projects.

Sony's venture into live-service gaming has encountered numerous hurdles. Despite the success of Arrowhead's *Helldivers 2*, which sold an impressive 12 million copies in just 12 weeks, making it the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game ever, other live-service attempts have faltered. Notably, Sony's *Concord* turned out to be a significant disappointment, lasting only a few weeks before being taken offline due to low player engagement. The failure of *Concord* led to its complete shutdown and the closure of its developer. This came after Sony had already canceled Naughty Dog's *The Last of Us* multiplayer game. Reflecting on these challenges, former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida expressed he would have resisted Sony's live-service push if he were in the current CEO Hermen Hulst's position.

In response to the cancellations, Bend Studio's community manager Kevin McAllister took to Twitter to thank fans for their support, adding, "P.S. We still plan on creating cool shit." Bend Studio's most recent release was *Days Gone* in 2019 for the PlayStation 4, which later came to PC in 2021.

During a recent financial call, Sony president, COO, and CFO Hiroki Totoki discussed the lessons learned from the contrasting fates of *Helldivers 2* and *Concord*. Totoki acknowledged that Sony should have implemented development checkpoints like user testing and internal evaluations much earlier in *Concord*'s development process. He admitted, "Currently we are still in the process of learning. Basically, with regards to new IP, of course you don’t know the result until you actually try it. So for our reflection, probably we need to have a lot of gates, including user testing or internal evaluation, and the timing of such gates, we need to bring them forward. We should have done those gates much earlier than we did."

Totoki also pointed to Sony's "siloed organization" and the unfortunate timing of *Concord*'s release, which coincided with the launch of the successful *Black Myth: Wukong* on PS5 and PC. He suggested that better inter-departmental collaboration and strategic release timing could prevent future cannibalization of sales. Totoki emphasized, "We have a siloed organization, so going beyond the boundaries of those organizations in terms of development and also sales, I think that could have been much smoother. And then going forward, in our own titles and in third-party titles, we do have many different windows. And we want to be able to select the right and optimal window so that we can deploy them on our own platform without cannibalisation, so that we can maximize our performance in terms of title launches."

In the same financial call, Sony senior vice president for finance and IR Sadahiko Hayakawa compared the launches of *Helldivers 2* and *Concord*, stating that the company plans to disseminate the insights gained from these experiences across its studios. Hayakawa said, "We launched two live-service games this year. *Helldivers 2* was a huge hit, while *Concord* ended up being shut down. We gained a lot of experience and learned a lot from both. We intend to share the lessons learned from our successes and failures across our studios, including in the areas of title development management as well as the process of continually adding expanded content and scaling the service after its release so as to strengthen our development management system. We intend to build on an optimum title portfolio during the current mid-range plan period that combines single-player games — which are our strengths and which have a higher predictability of becoming hits due to our proven IP — with live-service games that pursue upside while taking on a certain amount of risk upon release."

Looking ahead, Sony continues to develop several live-service games, including Bungie’s *Marathon*, Guerrilla’s *Horizon Online*, and Haven Studio’s *Fairgame$*.