Sony has closed another of its first-party studios, Dark Outlaw, earlier this week. This follows a pattern of Sony-owned studios shutting down, especially those focused on live-service games—like Firewalk Studios, the developer behind Concord, which closed in 2024. However, it turns out Dark Outlaw was not working on another doomed live-service shooter.
The insight came from former junior game designer JCbackfire, a content creator who interviewed his ex-boss, Jason Blundell, on his Twitch channel on March 25. Due to confidentiality agreements, they couldn't delve into specifics, but JC expressed that he was "excited to go to work every single day, which is an absolute blessing," and he "wouldn't change" his time at the studio "for the world," despite the closure being disappointing.
Blundell, originally from the UK, recounted the emotional final day: "What happened at the end of that day, we all went down to the pub — sorry, the bar. I'm in America. They went down to the bar and there was a lot of hugs. It was a team of top-class professionals. All disappointed. We're all disappointed, but the connections, the relationships, the things that we built... that's the professionalism. These things will come. Bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people. These things happen, but pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and go again. But we're going to mourn what could've been, 'cos we were making a hell of a game."
JC then discussed the game in development at Dark Outlaw, as well as Blundell's previous studio, Deviation. Both were cautious with details due to non-disclosure agreements, stating, "we have to respect confidentiality, so we can't go into every gory detail," but assured viewers that "you would have really liked what we were doing. What a shame." JC added, "I loved the type of project we were working on. It wasn't a live service game. Personally I was really stoked about just making something focused and just something I really wanted to make. I wish I could talk more about it, but we have to respect it a little bit. But yeah. The team dynamic is the thing I'm going to miss the most, I think. And I would do anything to get that back."
Blundell humorously noted that the team remains connected, saying, "the phone still works." When asked about the game's genre, Blundell hinted, "I think it's fair to say that the kind of person who would ask that question would probably be the kind of person who would enjoy the kind of game we were making." This suggests it might have been a first-person shooter, possibly a zombie-themed one, given Blundell's background at Activision on Call of Duty's Zombies mode.
JC reflected on his five-year career, implying that all his projects have been canceled before announcement, leading Blundell to quip, "And that means you get your official 'I'm a developer' badge." Blundell elaborated on the industry's challenges: "From the outside world, it's frustrating, right, because we were going to do something, we were going to get it out. The fans are then disappointed, you're disappointed, because you were working there, dreaming of the product. Something starts coming to life and you start getting excited and it's then it's like: boom. 'Oh. What happens now?' But sometimes things have to end. That's how we get new beginnings, right? I don't want to get too philosophical about it, but that happens all the time. The games industry is a creative arts, like TV, like movies, like comics. You're crafting something, and you rely on patrons [publishers and investors] to move that forward, and sometimes things change. The world changes, right?"
Blundell expressed no resentment toward Sony or PlayStation, stating, "I have a huge gratitude and thanks to Sony. I know everyone looks for the drama, but what amazing people. They absolutely backed us up and supported us all the way through that process. And they were there all the way through. Now, you know, when things change — [it's just] business, you got to deal with it, right? Our responsibilities as the artists, our responsibility as creatives is to dust yourself off and get back up and get going again."
Sony established Dark Outlaw almost exactly a year before its closure, staffing it with former members of Deviation Games, Blundell's earlier venture. Blundell, a veteran of Activision and Treyarch on Call of Duty, co-founded Deviation Games in June 2021 with fellow Treyarch veteran Dave Anthony. He left in 2022, layoffs occurred in 2023, and Deviation shut down in 2024 before announcing its project. Dark Outlaw was announced in 2025.
In recent years, Sony has closed several studios and canceled multiple games. In February, it closed Bluepoint Games, known for Demon's Souls and Shadow of the Colossus Remake. Last year, a live-service God of War game and an unannounced project at Bend Studio, developer of Days Gone, were scrapped, followed by layoffs. In 2023, Naughty Dog officially halted work on a live service multiplayer version of The Last of Us. Sony has not yet commented on these developments.
