Sony is set to shut down Dark Outlaw Games, the studio headed up by Jason Blundell of COD Zombies fame. The move comes almost exactly one year after the studio’s formation under Sony in March of 2025, and marks the second time that Sony has ended up calling time on a relationship with a company that Blundell formed.
The report comes via resetera, with a simple “yup” from Jason Schreier to back it up.
Dark Outlaw’s project was still very much a mystery, having only been in the earliest stages of development when the studio’s existence was confirmed, and no public branding, announcement trailer or other news in the past year.
This follows on from Blundell’s first aborted partnership with Sony, having founded Deviation Games in 2020 and leading to the 2021 announcement that they would develop a “groundbreaking AAA original IP” in partnership with PlayStation as an external studio. Blundell left Deviation after around a year in 2022, and while development continued for a while as part of PlayStation’s live service folly, funding was pulled and the Deviation closed down in 2024.
It’s not currently known how many developers are affected by Dark Outlaw’s closure, though we’d anticipate that the studio was still a relatively small team at this time. Regardless, we wish them all well in finding new employment at a continually awful time for game developers.
And it’s not just Dark Outlaw, with the report noting a number of other layoffs across PlayStation’s US and UK business, though with the number said to be “small”, and a shift back away from the mobile gaming market, outside of supporting public projects like MLB The Show Mobile, Ratchet & Clank: Ranger Rumble, and games in partnership with NCSOFT.
Today’s news comes barely a month after Sony shutdown remake specialists Bluepoint Games, who had a live service game cancelled and then a Bloodborne remake nixed by FromSoftware, and it sparks fresh concerns for the future of a number of Sony studios and projects in the live service arena. While Horizon Hunters Gathering received a full reveal not long ago and looks to be on solid ground, you have the likes of Bend Studio who had their live service project canned alongside Bluepoint last year, there’s the game called Gummy Bears which was spun out from Bungie in 2024, and then there’s Fairgame$ from Haven, with studio founder Jade Raymond having jumped ship last May and the game’s Creative Director leaving a few months later.
Source: Resetera
