Layoffs in the games industry, especially in the past several years, remain a sordid matter, but there’s something about certain studios closing that just hurts. I’m talking about the closure of Monolith Productions of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and War fame. I’m talking about the closure of Tango Gameworks (before it was purchased and revived by Krafton alongside the Hi-Fi Rush IP, of course). And today, I’m talking especially about Bluepoint Games.
Yes, the same Bluepoint Games that developed Demon’s Souls Remake, a top-tier PS5 exclusive and one of the very best launch titles across generations. In a recent statement to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, the studio will shut down in March after a “recent business review” by Sony. About 70 employees will lose their jobs, but hey, the company thanks them for their “passion, creativity, and craftsmanship.”
A stream of expletives wouldn’t be enough to express my annoyance at all this, but amidst it all, I – and several thousands of other fans – can only ask one thing: Why?
Well, PlayStation Studios CEO Hermen Hulst has the answer – allegedly, of course, in a message shared with staff and reported by Kotaku. While praising the studio’s various successes, he said, “At the same time, we’re operating in an increasingly challenging industry environment. Rising development costs, slowed industry growth, changing player behavior, and broader economic headwinds are making it harder to build games sustainably.
“To navigate this reality, we need to continue adapting and evolving. We’ve taken a close look at our business to ensure we’re delivering today while still well-positioned for the future. As a result, we will be closing Bluepoint Games in March. This decision was not made lightly. Bluepoint is an incredibly talented team, and their technical expertise has delivered exceptional experiences for the PlayStation community. I want to thank everyone at Bluepoint for their creativity, craftsmanship, and commitment to quality. Where possible, we will work to find opportunities for some impacted employees within our global network of studios.”
Remember last year when Sony cancelled several live service projects and even shut down SIE London Studio? Bend Studio’s next title was in the bin, but so was Bluepoint’s – which was the first time we had even heard about their new project (that too based on an unlikely candidate for the model). “Is that what Sony had the developer on after acquiring it in 2021?” we all probably said at the same time, likely with the same level of shock.
I mean, this is the studio that not only worked on Demon’s Souls Remake but also Shadow of the Colossus Remake, which received its fair share of accolades. It brought Gravity Rush to an entirely new market with the 2015 remaster on PS4. It delivered not one, or two, or three, but four excellent collections for series like Uncharted and, of course, Metal Gear Solid. I still remember the sheer wizardry it employed to port Titanfall to the Xbox 360 back in 2014, and let’s not forget that it also worked on Ragnarok (alongside several other studios, but still).
A studio with such an impressive pedigree and by Sony’s own admission, “technical expertise” that resulted in “exceptional experiences for the PlayStation community,” and the first instinct was to put them on a live-service game? This reeks of Anthem all over again.
You could blame former SIE CEO Jim Ryan, who began the whole live-service initiative, which is still crashing and burning. But the current Sony is the one still trying to pursue live-service success. It desperately wants to recreate the success of Helldivers 2, and if it means throwing projects – and studios – at the wall until something sticks, consequences and layoffs be damned, then so be it.
In the case of Bluepoint Games, it probably didn’t see any possible place for it, repeated praise notwithstanding. After all, it already had one cancelled live-service project – which was greenlit by a higher-up who’s no longer in charge. Schreier reports that it tried pitching something else for the past year, and based on the results, it seems nothing appealed to Sony. Assuming it didn’t want to work on any more remakes – and that’s a tall assumption to make since Sony owns it and can mandate its next project – it’s ludicrous to think that there weren’t other areas or projects it could be assigned to.
Is it because Demon’s Souls didn’t sell millions of units in a certain period of time? Is that why Sony didn’t task it with making a Bloodborne remake? Is it only franchises like The Last of Us which deserve a remake, since they have a TV show to promote? We may never know.
Regardless, all of this simply smacks of a corporation that’s looking at any low-impact cuts it could make to improve its bottom line, even marginally so. Someone probably saw the number of developers at Bluepoint and decided it wasn’t worth keeping on the books at all, especially considering all the other above factors. None of us is privy to those high-level decisions, but this has to be one of the most out-of-touch that I’ve seen in quite a while.
It also makes you wonder about the company’s obsession with the live-service model. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. But if you’re Sony, shut down a bunch of studios, cancel several projects, lay off numerous employees, and then try again? It has to work eventually, right? That certainly seems to be the logic here.
How else could you explain projects like Horizon Hunters Gathering, which is reportedly the main focus of Guerrilla Games (with the next single-player Horizon reportedly not coming for several more years)? Or 4:Loop, developed by Bad Robot Games and failing to really ignite much interest all the times it’s been shown? You could argue that Marathon makes some sense given how much more space is in the extraction shooter market, but it’s still a coin toss, given Bungie’s reputation and the many ways it’s already bungled first impressions. And I dare Sony to tell me with a straight face that Bluepoint is worth shutting down, but Fairgame$, of all things, needs to remain in development (if it even still is, because no one wants to share anything).
Either way, for a company that so desperately needs more single-player titles, the decision is even more baffling. Remember when Sony committed to releasing “major single-player game titles every year” after Ghost of Yōtei? That was in a year which had only one notable single-player offering to speak of. Last year saw two in Yōtei and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, and the latter isn’t technically Sony as much as Kojima Productions. This year is similar with Saros and Marvel’s Wolverine to look forward to in terms of full-fledged single-player offerings (Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is more multiplayer-geared). From my perspective, you don’t need fewer award-winning studios for crafting more such experiences.
Wasn’t the end goal to “monetize” the current PS5 install base by growing the revenue from software and network services? Does Sony truly have so little faith in Bluepoint Games’ ability to deliver a notable single-player experience that it just shut it down rather than avoid the trouble? Does that mean Bend Studio is next, especially given how we’ve heard nothing about its next project in the past year as well? Does Sony simply rinse and repeat with this process until there are only the big-name studios left, after which it probably goes on another shopping spree for more?
It’s just so bizarre to me that you can have almost nothing worthwhile for such a talented studio for so many years while pushing all these other titles that no one asked for. Call it bias because I enjoyed several of their titles and have a soft spot for its specific feats, whether it’s delivering the best darned Metal Gear Solid HD Collection ever, exposing more people to the brilliance of Titanfall, or simply bringing Boletaria to a new generation in stunning detail. Either way, this is a massive loss for no good reason – dismissed just about as easily with the business equivalent of “Bye, Felicia.”
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
