BREAKING: PlayStation is shutting down Bluepoint Games, the studio responsible for modern remakes of classic games such as Demon’s Souls and Shadow of the Colossus, Bloomberg News has learned.

A shocking end for a well-respected studio.

Bluepoint was working on a God of War live-service game until it was canceled early last year. The studio then spent the last year pitching and trying to determine what it would do next.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    9 hours ago

    Hey guys, I know you made really good remasters of classic single-player games, but can you make us something nobody on this motherfucking Earth asked for?

    Oh wait, we don’t want you do do that any more.

    Why aren’t you making us any money?

  • me_myself_and_I@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    Hey there I heard you definitely want live service games right? Oh sorry you said remakes? No you must mean live service! /s

  • hypnicjerk@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    this is so insane on its face that the first place my mind goes is, were they about to unionize?

  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    What a needlessly stupid thing it was to put them on a live service project, and what a waste to close it down.

    • Goodeye8@piefed.social
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      1 day ago

      This is such a horrific mismanagement of a studio it makes me question if the studio itself wanted to make a live service game and bit off more than they could chew. Because if this is on Sony, and it does have Sony written all over it, then they’re legitimately worse than EA. It’s like a low I didn’t even know existed because it would be an astonishing level of incompetence.

      • Voytrekk@sopuli.xyz
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        18 hours ago

        A few years back when Sony purchased Bungie, they stated they wanted to focus more on live service games. I think they wanted to release 10 live service games over 10 years. That means they need a variety of their studios working on them, even if it isn’t their specialization. This is definitely a Sony decision and a stupid one at that.

      • slimerancher@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        Let’s assume it was the studio’s idea. They wanted to make a game that wasn’t their specialty and Sony let them do it because they didn’t want to stifle creativity. Now it failed miserably.

        Sony isn’t going to get the money they lost, so why not course correct and put the studio on what they specialise in?

        • Goodeye8@piefed.social
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          10 hours ago

          That’s what is puzzling me. How was it so impossible to course correct the studio when it’s absolutely obvious how to put two and two together?

      • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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        23 hours ago

        Word is this live service push was Jim Ryan’s initiative, and he left the company right before it all fell apart.

        • Goodeye8@piefed.social
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          11 hours ago

          But that happened in 2024, Sony had the whole of 2025 to figure out what to do with the studio and it’s not like they don’t have highly desirable games to remake cough Bloodborne cough for a studio known for excellent remakes. I just want to know what the hell happened in 2025 for the studio to get literally no projects greenlit by Sony? Is Sony still continuing its stupid live service push or did the studio no longer want to make remakes or what the problem was? The path forward is so clear you don’t even need a business degree to make the decision that could’ve kept this studio alive so what the hell happened?

          • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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            10 hours ago

            What happened is that pivoting from a bad idea like this takes a long time and a lot of money for a company this large, and they had no plan B, which is stupid, so they’d rather just reduce their operating expenses.

            • Goodeye8@piefed.social
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              10 hours ago

              It doesn’t take a whole year to pivot, unless they sit on their ass for that whole year. I’m not saying it’s not possible they did that but it would be an insane level of incompetence.

              • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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                9 hours ago

                I think it has to be insane levels of incompetence. They’re not patient enough to wait around for 3 years for Bluepoint to put out something that makes money, so they probably gave them some busy work, like support work for other studios, until they could go through the bureaucracy of closing the studio.

  • Chozo@fedia.io
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    1 day ago

    Bluepoint was working on a God of War live-service game until it was canceled early last year.

    Maybe this was for the best, if that was their best idea to move forward with. I feel like people are getting tired of cookie-cutter live service games coming out every year.

    • Kushan@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      My main issue with live service games is that I just don’t have the fucking time to invest in them.

      I’ve yet to see a game move to live service that didn’t just pad out all the busy work and fuck with the pacing of any story element.

      Give me a single player experience that I can push up 6 months later and not have to grind to get back to where ever I was.

    • Mortoc@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      You can just smell the shitty decision making that some executive went thru. Prolly the same exec that pulled the trigger on the layoffs.

    • omarfw@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I’ve been tired of live service games since before fortnite had battle royale.

  • the_korben@feddit.org
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    1 day ago

    Wow. The whole console space is really going down the drain, isn’t it? Disappointing generations, hardware shortages, price increases, stupid live-service initiatives nobody wants, ever more subscriptions, and closing of studios that would usually turn out hits as long as you let them work in peace… Thank god for indie studios, retro consoles, PC gaming and a backlog that will last me three lifetimes.

    • samus12345@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      Yeah, as someone who’s mostly been a console peasant my whole life I’ve found myself gravitating heavily towards the Steam Deck, both for native games and emulators. I have a mid-range PC, but I’m much more likely to sit down and play a game on the TV rather than at a desk. The Steam Machine would have been perfect for me, but I know it’s going to cost way more than I’m willing to spend, so I’ll be sticking to my Deck, PS5, and PC for the foreseeable future. It seems unlikely I’ll ever get a new Nintendo or Sony console at this point and any future hardware upgrades will be PC related.

  • commander@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Crazy. They could have at least put them on a new remake project. I don’t understand closing studios that are provenly productive. Replace leadership. Replace directors/leads if they’re not proving to lead well or their ideas aren’t panning out commercially but don’t shutter the whole studio. Like 343 Halo games aren’t critical success but they deliver products. Obsidian games aren’t selling great currently but they ship products on the regular. Bluepoint could be making smaller games like Twisted Metal. More remakes. Jak and Daxter remakes or sequels. Square Enix get’s a lot of flak like every mega publisher but I think they’re great for making a bunch of smaller AA games along with big games like Final Fantasy

    • Caveman@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Yeah, but the landscape is pretty harsh for AA games right now. They could easily milk the IP they already have.

    • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      It happens all the time, but you need startup capital. And a lot of what they did is remaking games (at high quality) that they don’t own the rights to.

    • Screen_Shatter@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      A studio is only ever as good as its people. Those people will move to other things, sometimes they will group together under a new name. So yes, totally possible, you just might not recognize them if it happens.

  • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Probably because not enough people are buying PS5s. You all didn’t rent a PS5, so now small indie company Sony has to dissolve a studio. It’s not the executive’s fault, it’s the consumer’s fault, obviously.

  • BurgerBaron@piefed.social
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    1 day ago

    No Games Station becomes more and more true over time. Trend chasing failures is the new Sony trend.

    PS4 was so disappointing to me after 1/2/3 and it’s sad to see continued decline.

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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    1 day ago

    I step out of the executive office

    This is a great lesson that business people are like, super smart, ok guys, so don’t try to tell THEM how to make Video Games while not failing catastrophically OK? Those artists set themselves up to fail by not taking business seriously before business people took their art seriously.

    Also go back to work! You are artists, your time is worth NOTHING!!! Do you want to get fired like those Playstation employees?

  • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    This is even more stupid than Microsoft shutting down studios. It makes literally no sense.