PlayStation shuts down another first-party studio as games industry shies away from risk

Sony's stable of first-party studios continues to shrink as the company tries to wrangle growing operating costs and content risk portfolios.

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Sony has made the decision to shutter and close another first-party studio as the games industry continues moving away from high spending on unproven titles. Sources tell Bloomberg's Jason Schreier that Dark Outlaw Games has been nixed:

"More layoffs today: PlayStation is closing Dark Outlaw Games, a studio formed last year by former Call of Duty lead Jason Blundell (his previous studio, Deviation, was shut down in 2024)," Schreier said on BlueSky.

Last year, Blundell confirmed the existence of Dark Outlaw Games, saying that the group had been "working away in the shadows for a while" on an unannounced project.

Sony has yet to confirm the news, and the info comes on the same day as Epic Games laying off 1,000 people who worked across its popular games, including Fortnite.

The Japanese games giant has been quick to respond to market trends, having taken Concord offline and shutting down the studio that made it in what seemed to be record time. Sony has seemingly shifted away from its big live service push, reducing the amount of games that it funds while also scrapping the games that don't do well--like Concord, which was met with a major write-down at the PlayStation division.

The news also comes weeks after Sony shut down another popular first-party game dev studio, Bluepoint Games, a team that was responsible for numerous remakes like the PS5 launch title Demon's Souls.

It's also worth mentioning that Marathon, the latest live service game from a first-party Sony studio, may also have missed the company's internal sales expectations; estimates indicate Marathon has sold around 1.2 million copies on all platforms, which is significantly less than Sony's major live game hit, Helldivers 2, which managed to sell 'way more' than 5 million copies before it even launched on Xbox.