Sony cancels more live service projects and lets go of more PlayStation staff

2024 didn't exactly go to plan for many teams across the PlayStation Studios business. Many ‘live service' games have now been cancelled, two studios have closed entirely and on top of that, there have been multiple waves of lay-offs. Unfortunately, things aren't quite turning around in 2025 just yet, as more lay-offs have been announced. 

Sony is undergoing a restructuring effort across its US-based studios. As part of this, employees at Sony's Visual Arts studio in San Diego have now been let go. This follows a series of cancellations in recent weeks.

As reported by Eurogamer, the cuts have something to do with the recent cancellation of the next game from Days Gone developer, Bend Studios. Additionally, Sony had Bluepoint working on a live-service game set in the God of War universe, which has also been cancelled.

Under previous head, Jim Ryan, PlayStation spent billions embarking on a mission to reinvent its studios as live service teams. At one point, Sony had more than a dozen live service games in development at first party studios. Now just a few years later, the vast majority of those projects have been cancelled, with Sony scaling back its live service ambitions.

KitGuru Says: Jim Ryan really made a mess of things with the acquisition of Bungie and the big push towards live service. We're now at a point where even mentioning the term leads to bad PR for your game, as we saw with the announcement and eventual failed launch of Concord. 

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