Sony has cancelled “live service” games from two of its subsidiaries; Bluepoint and Bend Studios. The announcement was made to Sony staff by a company spokesperson today, as reported by Jason Schreier over at Bloomberg. Jason himself was able to confirm in a social media post that the game Bluepoint was working on was a “live service” God of War game.

These two titles, being developed by two different studios whose previous releases have been predominately single player games, were part of an ongoing strategy of Sony’s that focused on “live service”. In a memo sent to Bloomberg, Sony said they were “working closely with Bend and Bluepoint to determine what are the next projects and plan to do everything we can to ensure there is minimal business impact.”

These cancellations come not that long after the abysmal launch of Sony’s last foray into “live service” games with Concord, developed by the now closed Firewalk Studios. It also raises the count to three cancelled projects in just over a year, with the Last of Us Part 2 Multiplayer game cancelled back in December 2023.

It is hard to say if these cancellations were due to Sony’s lack of confidence in the projects Bend and Bluepoint were working on, or a larger shift away from their “live service” plans. Both Fairgames from Haven Studios, and Marathon from Bungie are still being developed, so perhaps we’ll hear more about them soon.

Bluepoint’s last game was released as a launch title for the PlayStation 5 in 2020, while Bend’s hasn’t released a game since 2019 with Days Gone. With both these studios starting from scratch on new projects, it’s quite likely that we won’t see or hear anything from either of them for a few more years.

What are your thoughts on these cancellations? Let us know in the comments.