Two unannounced PlayStation games have been scrapped, with one of the projects reportedly being a live-service God of War title.
Sony is continuing to scale back on its ambitious live-service strategy. While the publishing giant initially planned a dozen live-service games to release by March 2026, some, like Concord, have crashed and burned, and now others have been canceled before they even make it to market.
A report from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier indicates two more of these live-service projects have now been scrapped. One was from Bend Studio, the team behind 2019’s Days Gone. The other was from Bluepoint Games, a team best known for its remasters and remakes, like the 2020 Demon Souls PS5 launch.
While details are few and far between as to what these particular live-service games entailed, Schreier followed up on social media to clarify at least one. It turns out, Bluepoint’s project was a live-service God of War game.
God of War was set for a live-service spinoff
A Sony spokesperson confirmed the news to Schreier, detailing how the two games were canceled internally “following a recent review.”
Despite the game’s being shut down entirely, the spokesperson assured both dev teams will be continuing operations, though they made no mention of the possibility of layoffs.
“Bend and Bluepoint are highly accomplished teams who are valued members of the PlayStation Studios family, and we are working closely with each studio to determine what are the next projects.”
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
Bluepoint previously worked as a support studio on God of War Ragnarok, the 2022 sequel. Connecting the dots, it’s safe to assume their live-service take on the IP had been in the works ever since, at least two years of full-scale development.
It would have marked the studio’s first original game since 2006, given their work predominantly focuses on remasters, remakes, and collections.
Obviously, there’s no telling just how a live-service God of War game may have functioned. Perhaps it could have been similar to 2023’s surprise Valhalla update, with repeatable content and a few microtransactions thrown in the mix, though that’s purely speculation.
As Santa Monico Studio remains tight-lipped on its future projects, there’s also no way to know if a new single-player installment in the legendary IP was in the works concurrently with this live-service spinoff.
Meanwhile for Bend, it’s been six years since the studio released a new game, and will no doubt now be years longer until a new project takes shape.
Of course, these aren’t the first unannounced live-service projects to be scrapped. In early 2024 we caught wind of a multiplayer Spider-Man project that set the internet ablaze. Sony canceled that one too.
