Sony has closed Dark Outlaw Games, a first-party studio founded in 2025 by former Call of Duty producer Jason Blundell, before it could announce its debut PlayStation title. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reported the shutdown, which followed an internal announcement on Tuesday and aligns with broader PlayStation staff cuts, including mobile development teams, amid Sony's challenges with multiplayer and live-service games.
Dark Outlaw Games, headed by Jason Blundell, shut down shortly after its formation about a year ago, according to Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier and sources familiar with an internal Sony announcement on Tuesday. The studio had not revealed its first PlayStation project, but Blundell's background suggested a multiplayer focus. He previously led Deviation Games on a Sony-published live-service title with an initial budget over $200 million, which unraveled in 2024 amid development issues and withdrawn funding, per reports from Kotaku and others.
Blundell, a veteran of Activision and Treyarch, worked as a programmer and producer on Call of Duty 3, directed the campaign and Zombies modes for Call of Duty: Black Ops III, and oversaw Zombies and career modes for Black Ops 4. In an interview about a year ago, he expressed excitement about the new venture: “I’ve had the amazing opportunity to create a new studio within PlayStation Studios for Sony. The studio is called Dark Outlaw. We’ve been working away in the shadows for a while, when we’ve got something to talk about we’ll step out into the light.” He added, “It’s such a privilege to be able to do it with Sony as a new first-party studio. Sony doesn’t start up first-party studios all the time, so to have that privilege is humbling.”
The closure fits Sony's recent pattern of retreating from certain multiplayer efforts. It follows Bluepoint Games' shutdown in February after work on a live-service God of War project, Firewalk Studios' closure post the October 2024 launch of shooter Concord, and Naughty Dog's abandonment of a standalone multiplayer The Last of Us game in December 2023. The move coincides with layoffs targeting PlayStation's mobile staff.
Sony continues several multiplayer projects, including two Horizon Zero Dawn spin-offs from Guerrilla Games and NCSoft, Fairgame$ from the former Haven Studios team, Arrowhead Game Studios' Helldivers 2, Bungie's Destiny 2 and Marathon, and Gran Turismo 7. Engadget reached out to Sony for comment but received no response at the time of publication.
