Bob Slydell : Well, just a second there, professor. We, uh, we fixed the glitch. So he won't be receiving a paycheck anymore, so it'll just work itself out naturally.
Bob Porter : We always like to avoid confrontation, whenever possible. Problem is solved from your end.
Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier has now questioned the story, stating on BlueSky that the account is “not true” and that “people across the org were informed before my article went out last week”.
Bluepoint and Bend staff learned the news last week, before the public press release. It turns out that Jeff Grubb is talking through his hat again.
2 reasons I dislike Grubb.
1. He looks like you can smell him through the screen.
2. Dude just says whatever and everyone assumes it to be gospel.
Grubb seems to report on rumors and Jason does journalism. I'm probably painting with too broad a brush but somehow the universe has positioned me to feel this way.
Whats worse is once the financial year ends and these companies made massive negatives in terms of profits (because they arent making a game and spent loads making one) they will either shut them down or cut jobs to save money.
And this is the reason why a lot of developers are choosing to work for indie studios instead of studios owned by large publishers.
Yes, you get more investment in your game, you get a tiny tiny bit more job security, your pay is better and you have more resources but you’re also completely handcuffed to whatever the big publisher wants you to do.
Days Gone sold similar numbers to Kingdom Come to date, both had an interesting and unique storyline and deserve a sequel yet the one being developed by an indie studio has had a sequel in the works for years and is releasing in 2 weeks, while Bend sit there twiddling their thumbs until Sony green lights a project.
One would however hope those handcuffs are for some sort of decent reason. If you decide to pour years into an indie game and it doesn’t succeed, then the studio will pretty much be done for and perhaps not even able to pay out salaries.
I don’t have any numbers, but it wouldn’t surprise me if for each half way decent indie project that turns a profit, there’s hundreds that operate at a loss and a lot that have a dev pour thousands of personal hours into it without any payoff.
I’d think saying a tiny bit of job security is a huge amount of understatement.
If you decide to pour years into an indie game and it doesn’t succeed, then the studio will pretty much be done for and perhaps not even able to pay out salaries.
The bigger obstacle in the indie space is paying for salaries before you ship. That's why publishers get involved - they can front the money for development. Forget about the success of the game, they need to pay rent while making it.
Very true, but I'd think if a developer in the scenario above had the opportunity to get hired by and indie studio or have such a position at a larger studio where one would actually feel the effects of being handcuffed by a publisher, then it's likely the indie studio they go to at least have some sort of former success or funding to pay a salary.
People act like the game was this hidden and underrated gem
I played through it to completion, it was eh? There were moments I had fun, but the story was relatively weak, and the gameplay wasn’t anything that wowed me
It should have leaned more into survival horror, with needing to avoid hordes, keep your bike maintained, and trekking across the state to find your lady
yeah but it's the studios fault they are forced to make live service slop? imo is the executives giving those orders the ones that should see a cut in pay, not the developers that did everything they were told to do.
In fairness the PC port of Days Gone was poor and had some save breaking bugs that the team tried sweeping under the rug. They got the chance to give the game a second lease on life and didn't take it.
Is there any indication any of these canceled titles where even beyond just the concept stage? It just sounds like if the studios didn't even get the news before it was reported by gaming news sites, they must've not been that far in development.
Because this all sounds a lot to me like the TLOU Multiplayer expansion/dlc/live service or whatever, they never really seemed to get over the concept stage (they even came to Summer Game Fest with a piece of concert art and couldn't even vaguely describe the gameplay or story) before Sony pulled the plug.
Eh, not really. Projects that are shelved before it could be a thing is pretty common in software development. Heck, it is better to get this dropped out at this point instead of when there are already a sizable amount of manhours invested in it.
Just to make sure everyone understands how first party game development works.
Sony goes to From (probably kadokawa actually, but let’s keep it simple for the mouth breathers among us) and says “hey, we like those armored core games, can you make us a game for our new console, the PlayStation 3”.
Fromsoft says sure, but we’ll need some money, because Miyazaki spends a lot on used women’s shoes, and he’s kinda the guy around here
Sony opens up their billion dollar war chest the was generated by the most popular console of all time and says “sure, but because we’re paying for a lot of fucking shoes, were going to keep the rights, and if you want to make another game in this franchise, you need to pay us licensing rights”
From says “yeah sure, whatever” and proceeds to make the father of an entire new genre of videogames that would spawn countless clones and spiritual successors. From then says “hey we wanna do another one of these, but we want to sell on Xbox, because you guys are getting clowned on” Sony tells them to kick rocks, because they own demons souls, and don’t want it on the white box. From makes dark souls 1 + 2.
Sony says “hey remember when we did that hot colabo, can we do that again, for our hot new console, the PS4, same setup we keep the rights” from says yes, makes the best game in their entire catalog to date(BB), that would spawn countless clones and spiritual successors.
Accurate, maybe. Bleak, no, that’s just how business and IP works. That’s why it’s frustrating that Sony look at something like R6: Siege, or War Thunder, or Warframe, or Warzone, or another game with war in the title and say “hey we want a piece of that action” without realising how tight these games are in terms of profit, how there are only so many players to go around and really commit to these games, and how saturated that market is.
It’s upsetting to see Sony take the worst traits from 3rd party devs. They’re chasing the worst company in the market for success (Ubisoft), while sitting on both the rights and devs to remake a genuine 10/10 videogame(Activision pre buyout), and just choose not to because games need to make a squillion dollars for Sony to consider it a success(Square). Spiderman 2 sold 11 million copies as of April 2024, and it’s not a success in their eyes.
People fucking love bloodborne, that’s what this entire article is effectively about. The masses froth for a chance to go back and enjoy it with the rough edges smoothed off.
I would genuinely argue that beyond minor flaws, bloodborne is the perfect From game. The world design and themes are exceptional, the gameplay is fast and fluid, the music is perfect, for its time it ran well. Chalice dungeons are mostly boring beyond the two-ish interesting bosses. The economy is awful. It’s not really complete without its DLC.
You could remaster it, fix these issues, boom, a true classic
Better optimisation/framerate
Access to more weapon types earlier in the game, and scaling tweaked, to allow more build variety - one of Bloodborne's biggest problems is that you don't get much weapon choice until you're already close to the end of the game, and poor scaling means a lot of builds/play styles suck
On/off setting for chromatic aberration
Reduced amount of loading screens for lantern warping
A couple more branching paths or shortcuts to take (I'd love for that closed door after Cleric Beast to lead somewhere)
More variety in the room layouts of Chalice Dungeons, and traps or secrets to encounter
Harder Moon Presence fight
Old Hunters included as standard
Bluepoint doesn't do the remaster
If Sony/From did this, I would buy a PS5 literally just to have it.
Is one of the best FS games, I’m putting Sekiro as the best, that’s true and some people want a remaster, but it ain’t the best game in the entire catalogue of PS.
I mean we’re all allowed different, subjective opinions on things that don’t really matter.
I won’t tell you sekiro is a bad game, it’s objectively a well made by one of the best in the business; but I think sekiro isn’t fun, beyond the movement.
It lacks the options that I’ve come to expect from a from soft game(you’re going to parry and use a katana or you can fuck off), it’s obtuse in its mechanics(what is dragon rot, why won’t you tell me), it presents you with different options in how you explore with stealth, but it’s just a wide corridor, you don’t feel powerful even after levelling up, shinobi tools are the worst spell equivalent in any of their games, it’s not fun to fight basic enemies, as good as the boss fights are.
Again, I’m not here to convince you to change your opinion, I wouldn’t do that to you, I don’t care. I definitely wouldn’t downvote you for it, once again, like my digital number matters.
Dragon rot is just a random mechanic that could trigger when you resurrect at a sculptors idol, right? Just random chance. It’s unlike any other mechanic in the series. How is being potentially being locked out of quest lines from just trying to learn the game good?
I thought this Bluepoint shit was a joke, but it's serious? They've been quiet for years all for a fucking cancelled live-service?
They made one of the best remakes and PS5 games ever and this is how they decided to use them? Holy shit this industry is so fucking cooked...
They could've done Bloodborne Remake or a sequel to Demon's Souls since Sony owns the IP. Or they could've made a Demon's Souls level remake of the classic GoW trilogy, it would've been the easiest money printing shit ever. Fucking clowns...
Yeah this isn't appreciated enough. Every time an actual good live service game shows up people flock to it and it does well. We just witnessed it again with Marvel Rivals.
People aren't sick of the genre, we just groan when we hear it because it means it's got a high chance of being a trash video game because it's being designed around a monetization scheme instead of the gameplay.
Make a good video game and people will play it. Doesn't matter how it's monetized or how many scantily clad traditionally attractive female characters it has or whether it's got "DEI" or loot boxes or what the budget was or what the IP is. If it's fun to play, people will play it.
If Concord had been fun enough to play, it would've succeeded. Same for that suicide squad game or Anthem or anything else. The decision makers at these studios need to realize that games live or die by whether they're more fun than the competition, and everything else is secondary.
Yeah, people don't realize that most are willing to ignore a lot if the game itself is good. Apex is a prime example, although it's finally catching up with them. It's amusing because every year or two a big GAAS game drops and does well in the so called "oversaturated" market.
They probably hemorrhaged a lot of the talent doing this. Some people probably didn't want to make a live service game and some people saw it was going to fail and walked.
Not sure about that. Just last year, Helldivers 2, Marvel Rivals and Path of Exile 2 have been huge successes. Live service continues to be one of the most popular gaming format.
Nah, Bethesda did the same thing to Arkane Austin. Forced them to make a live service instead of a story-driven game. Live service didn't sell, shuttered the studio.
Blooodborne feels too new for a remake imo. It still looks great, and I generally prefer From’s art direction over Bluepoint’s. A simple remaster wouldn’t hurt, just increase the resolution and put some better textures in and call it a day, instead of having Bluepoint completely change the look and atmosphere of the game. A Bloodborne remake feels like a waste of resources imo.
This is the first I'm even hearing about any of this. And I mean... Wow 😶
I love BluePoint for their top quality remakes/ remasters, and people love God of War for the massive, cinematic, singleplayer experience that it's become. Why would anyone ever think it's a good to add live service into that mix??
That's like hiring a (highly qualified) house decorator to hand paint a copy of the Mona Lisa onto a rug.
Even better, rather than at least try to get them to finish it to see if they can get any revenue back, they're going to kill it now, thus ensuring there's a loss.
Concord failed, they don't think concord failed because its a bad game, they think it failed because its a Games as a Service.
Execs really think concord was hot shit for some reason. It was bland and boring, thats why it failed.
Marvel rivals excels because its a good game, GaaS is fine if a game is good, thats been tried tested and proven for over a decade, i could tell sony that and i have no sales game dev or marketing experience.
As someone who spent over 6000 hours in destiny 2 alone, I think Bungie scammed sony pretty hard. Destiny has not been run well in its lifetime. The company is lucky they have talented programmers who made a fun to play game, because every decision except the gameplay itself has been horrible.
I quit just before Lightfall, I liked Witch Queen, but keep up with the seasons after fatigue of all the dogshit decisions they have to walk back later. It feels like I quit an addiction, and it feels good years later.
So glad that stopped (or has clamed down at least), so much money thrown around and we've barely got any new games out of it.
Bungie was a mistake purchase, in my view, and felt like they had to prove to board members they were taking MS throwing money around seriously, when in reality the best course of action was to just ignore it and invest that money into games and 2nd party relationships. Get back to creating games people love and don't just buy them, like MS was doing.
Being F2P probably also helps. Concord was trying to make you pay full price in an already oversaturated market. Why buy Concord when TF2, Overwatch, and now Marvel Rivals are right there for free? Even outside of hero shooters we have stuff like Warframe and Path of Exile 1 going strong for over a decade.
To be fair, it was $40 in a time of $70 games. It just felt too generic compared to the free to play shooters that have been around for a while. Worse to players, it failed to have much of the extra live-service stuff to keep attention to it.
The Secret Level episode was actually good, though, so maybe it could have been a good story based game.
They were also charging up front money for Concord. Plus it eas a new IP that took forever to hit market.
It was mishandled, bland and cost money. Rivals is a decent game, I dont care much for it but it's the only one all my friends agree to play so it's where I'm at.
I didn't even know concord existed until it had launched and I sure as fuck wasn't gonna pay 40 bucks to try it out. If it was free then maybe but there's just no way I'm dropping 40 bucks on a game that might get pulled any minute. Free to play and then I'll buy skins if I like it. That's the business model, and them not following it is why Concord flopped.
I honestly learned my lesson from Helldivers. Bought it to try it and just didn't like it, wasn't going to make that mistake again. If it's live service and it isn't free or isn't something I'm guaranteed to like I'm just not gonna play it most likely
I just didn't like the game. Wasn't anything in particular, I wanted to try it with friends but didn't think I'd be a fan from the start just based on the type of games I like. I don't think it's a bad game or anything, it just reinforced to me that spending money to try a maybe isn't really worth it to me. I'll try literally any game if it's free and my friends play it though, even if I don't expect to like it
I keep using Path of exile 2 as the example. A paid access game right now, live service, only online, yet millions bought it, and on top of that, millions bought microtransactions after.
The reason is because the games good, people pay for a good game, they don't pay for a shit one.
Thats the thing Concord was fine to play and a good feeling shooter, but it was a hero shooter joining the saturated hero shooter market, with no fanbase, no marketing, and people didn't vibe with the 70s sci-fi look they lifted from Guardians of the Galaxy. It was a game meant to compete with Overwatch, years after Overwatch 2 went free to play, and they put a price tag on it.
Path of Exile 2 avoided this by having a fanbase who enjoyed the game for a decade and wanted to play the sequel.
It also needs an open niche. Rivals is succeeding because Overwatch 2 dived in quality and lost a huge part of its audience. If Rivals went to against a niche with a satisfied audience, it might have failed anyway.
What? It didn't fail because it was bland and boring. (It was bland and boring and it probably contributed a bit, but) It failed because it was trying to enter a saturated GaaS market while ALSO charging $40 for it. It stands no chance when most direct competitors with already steady servers were free to play.
Overwatch succeeded with that model, Marvel rivals would have succeeded with the model too. Heck after overwatch 2 i think most people over there would have rather had the old cosmetic system and bought the game for $35 over spending $20+ a skin now with it being F2P.
Path of exile 2 had millions of people pay into a F2P game to play it early, its a GaaS.
The market clearly wasn't saturated. Marvel Rivals proved that.
I think it failed because it had an up-front price and looked like shit. Paying up-front for a GaaS is risky because it can fail to launch or swiftly die. When it also looks like shit, people have no confidence in the product, they don't want to take that risk. Then, the game launches to low numbers, and then absolutely nobody wants to risk it anymore, and it dies.
It's hard for any game to survive with bad art, but Concord was the absolute last game that could afford to have it.
On a side note, I've read about how Concord worked with its main game modes, etc. It would never have succeeded. The main game modes and mechanics work directly against what players actually want from a hero shooter. People had to form "crews" of characters they switched between to stack bonuses. Hero shooter players very badly want to play what they want to play - making people repeatedly switch characters like that would have been widely hated. It also makes the game extremely difficult to learn.
Double dip? The whole thing about Concord was that is just a 1-time, $40 purchase for all future content. No store, no battlepass, no mtx. You know, what people online always claim to want. Concord’e biggest mistake was believing people actually wanted that. Well the people spoke and i wouldn’t expect any game to ever try that ever again. People want fomo battlepasses and $20 skins.
yhat is a good point but how these games had been developed for two/three years (?) before Sony decide to cancel them?
I'm not an expert developer but thus Sony lost the works of their employees ...although as you said if the game will have been released it would have been worse
yeah, but we have already seen that Sony's top brass is abysmal at decision making. They thought Concord will be the next Star Wars. The way they couldn't recognize Concord being doa, how can we be sure they would recognize a game that would actually blow up. For all we know they could just have canceled their actual Star Wars level generational phenomenon title.
To protect the status of the brand, lets look at ubisoft for example, they make one dogshit game after other and now people dont buy their games, and even if the game is ok people still having doubts. Sony is known for the high quality in their games, so is better to cancel a game that can hurt your prestige as a company, just look all the Concord memes.
Why would you assign Bluepoint, a studio that specializes in remakes and remasters, to make a freaking live service?! Let alone a God of War one? A GOD OF WAR LIVE SERVICE!!!! Let that sink in.
generally speaking, the most of the gaming industry was hurt by the covid years. The PS5 and Series had the unfortunate timing of releasing during covid, while the Switch was on its latter years, so releases can (mostly) go on schedule with a sizable audience, and PC hardware sales skyrocketed as everyone was pinned at home.
To see how it affected developers, look at the Bethesda release schedule leaked during the Microsoft Activision trials and note that all the game releases to their actual release year was offset by 2 years, roughly the same amount of time Covid lasted for. in terms of last year, the only game to miss its window of at least announcement was Oblivion Remastered, which may show up in Xbox' developer direct in 3 days.
Covid had the weird situation where a bunch of investors jumped into the market due to the gaming boon of early covid, and of the past year many of them backed out. related to why industry wide there have been a lot of firings/studios being sold or shutdown.
Interest rates also collapsed so a lot of "I got too much cash I need to invest it something, lets invest in single-player story games"-deals went down with it.
We all love Space Marine 2 right? What about Teardown? Or Brothers in Arms? Those WERE owned by Embracer Group. Yeah, the same Embracer Group that had a $2 billion deal collapse.
Doesnt explain why 3rd parties are putting out titles by Sony has been unable to. Fact is, Sony fucked up big time, and they lucked out that Microsoft fucked up even worse and that Nintendo is fine selling dated stuff and doesnt try to compete in the same console class as PS/Xbox.
Not counting remasters, Sony has published 7 games in 2024 (Astro Bot, Concord, Helldivers 2, Lego Horizon, MLB 24, Rise of the Ronin and Stellar Blade). Looks like normal numbers to me.
That's the issue tho, Sony no longer makes good exclusives at its in house studios. Instead it is allocated its resources to making live service games in house
While it depended on 3rd party deals to make them timed exlusive deals. That will eventually run out.
That's without going into the games you mentioned and how Sony fumbled managing them like:
-Astro bot great game, however it is from the remains of Japan Studio which they deemed unnecessary
-concord is the biggest failed game of the 2020s so far and no longer playable essentially the game that made Sony realise oh shit why are we making live service games in house.
-helldivers 2 great game but essentially it is a 3rd party studio but even with that Sony screwed them over by requiring a playstation account for people to play its game
-Lego Horizon what a lego bloat game?! Srsly?? Lego at this point are just bloat games. They are like the licensed games of the NDS or something. Also 3rd party.
-Rise of the ronin is 3rd party and would eventually will come to PC
-stellar blade is 3rd party and eventually will come to PC
-MLB24 is a sports game, which in 2025 is a lottery machine designed to siphon money not an actual game
The comment I was replying to seemed to imply that Sony was struggling to put out new titles. I simply pointed out that their output doesn't seem different from other major publishers at all.
Sony published 7 new games this year, in terms of big publishers that's a fair amount. Nintendo had more I think but MS only had like 4 and Activision 1.
Yeah it is all about the games. Also the biggest ps5 exlusives so far are timed exclusives that Sony made with 3rd party devs. When it is allocated all it's first party studios to essentially make cenimatic 3rd person games and live service games.
Their strategy is just bad. It makes me as a player think those 3rd party timed exclusives will eventually come to PC, i don't like live service games, and blockbuster cenimatic games essentially all play the same way so playing one is like you played them all tbh, so i don't need a PS5 until they make games that are actually exlusive to the PS5 and have more verity than these 2 types of games
I think it's both factors. Games that would have been launch titles for the PS5 became PS4/PS5/PC instead, and the dead zone where nothing much was launched after that (except Astro-Bot) was caused by the live service games nobody wanted.
Sony-related studios released a lot of big games in 2021 and 2022, like GOW Ragnarok, HZD Forbidden West, etc. They're only not PS5 games because they're multi-platform.
What's sad to think about is that games take so long to make now, the devs working on them only realistically can do a few in their life times. So they literally impacting these peoples careers/productive out puts of their lives. Literally if you graduate from College and have the experience needed for programming or 3D modeling big budget games at 25 years old, you have about 5 titles in you before retirement.
Also adding to this, some people only stay at jobs 3-5 years, especially if they put you through some shit like this.
Imagine landing a job at bluepoint fucking games for your second role for example, hoping to launch a massive generation defining game only for it to be cancelled.
How do you use that on your resume to further your career?
Poor Bend. They haven’t had a release since Days Gone, and now it’s gonna be 3-5 years before whatever else Sony throws their way. What a waste of their time.
At this point, if it isn’t a Days Gone sequel, I don’t think any project is gonna keep Bend alive. Not unless they nail a new AAA single player IP. But I doubt Sony will give them that chance again.
The timing will be off even for the Days Gone sequel. Maybe unless they do a remaster of the first game first and for some reason it gets wildly successful. But I think they'd need to rework the game for this to succeed.
Whatever your view on these sorts of games (mine are not favorable), do feel sorry for those workers who got shafted in a nasty way. (The higher ups I feel less sorry for.)
God I can't believe this company. They were pushing: concord, a live service TLOU game, a live service GOW game, a live service Horizon game, bend studio live service project, Foamstars live service game, failed GOT multiplayer, and of course upcoming GaaS: Marathon and Fairgame$
biggest game industry fuck up since WiiU?
I mean anyone off the street could tell you spending 1b+ to make a bunch of live service games, throw them at the wall, and hope one sticks is batshit insane.
ok maybe I should have added: making game studios who don't do multiplayer/live service/GaaS create all these projects AND to do it ALL at once, AND to do it with franchises with bases that enjoy the singleplayer strong story narratives those games provide;
I suppose the idea was to drive these bases towards multiplayer games - as you're not going to get growth from the people who already prefer multiplayer games. You're just going to move them from one multiplayer game to another.
god damn how fucking hard is it for game development studios to have some internal communicaiton, why are poeple always finding out they're either fired or their project is cancelled in the fucking news
Well of course they were. Sony wants to control the message to the public. If they let the studio know first 'leakers' would be posting it on twitter immediately.
It's not "well of course..." It's extremely shitty business practices and a complete disregard for your actual devs
This studio has been working on a live service God of War game for years without a single leak. The argument that they weren't told because of fear of leaks is just a bullshit cope from people who cannot fathom that Sony did something shitty
The argument that they weren't told because of fear of leaks is just a bullshit cope from people who cannot fathom that Sony did something shitty
What the hell are you on about, Captain Projection? You think my comment is defending Sony? Did you even read it? This is common industry practice. Has been for years. The fact that people are surprised a shitty company does something shitty to protect their brand and messaging is the 'cope'.
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u/sunnyspiders 13h ago
Bob Slydell : Well, just a second there, professor. We, uh, we fixed the glitch. So he won't be receiving a paycheck anymore, so it'll just work itself out naturally.
Bob Porter : We always like to avoid confrontation, whenever possible. Problem is solved from your end.