Live service God of War game reportedly one of two freshly-axed Sony projects

Sony continues to massively scale back on its live service ambitions with two more cancelations, including an alleged God of War game.

Cast your mind back a couple of years, and you’ll remember Sony proudly declaring that it’d be releasing a dozen live service games before the end of 2025-26 financial year. Ever since, it’s enjoyed a couple of victories, like Helldivers 2, but it’s mostly been marked by embarrassing failures (Concord) or cancelations of projects that never saw the light of day (that The Last Of Us multiplayer game). Well, you can now add two more onto that pile. Sony has confirmed that it has canceled live service projects that were being worked on by Day’s Gone developer Bend Studios and Demon’s Souls remake wizards Bluepoint. Oh, and according to reports, Bluepoint was cooking up a God of War game.

Despite its many talented studios being famous for creating gorgeous and memorable single-player games that PC players would usually have to impatiently wait for, Sony’s decision to go extremely hard on live service multiplayer games has turned out to be a disaster. Helldivers 2 proudly stands as the one project that’s emerged and really established itself as a success. But it in no way balances out the unbelievably tragic demise of Concord, or the axing of all these projects that were lumped onto teams that had never made live service games before. Even Destiny 2, the live service godfather, has shown concerning signs of decline in its Sony era (although admittedly, existing Bungie leadership could also be a factor to that).

Now, in a report from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, Sony confirms that two live service games being worked on by Bend and Bluepoint have been scrapped following a review of all the projects SIE studios are working on. While it doesn’t mention if these cancelations will result in layoffs, Sony does stress that neither Bend or Bluepoint will be shutting down – a fate that has befallen the likes of London Studio, which was also working on a live service game when it got closed.

“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,” a Sony spokesperson told Schreier.

While Bend was working on a new IP, Schreier claims in follow-up posts on BlueSky that Bluepoint’s game was a God of War live service game. “PlayStation fans have speculated for years about Bluepoint’s new projects since the well-received PS5 remake of Demon’s Souls (2020). I can report that from 2020-2022 they were helping on God of War Ragnarok. Since then they’ve been on the live-service project that was canceled today. Now, unclear,” he says.

As for what’s left of Sony’s live service plans, there are still a few games left standing – for now. Of the confirmed games we know about, there’s Bungie’s extraction shooter Marathon, “competitive heist game” Fairgames from Haven Studios, and a multiplayer project set in the Horizon universe from Guerrilla Games.

Sony is also continuing to develop a project that Bungie was working on, which according to rumors is a MOBA-style game with fighting game elements, codenamed Gummy Bears. It took this project out of Bungie’s remit after making layoffs last year, but continues to develop it with a newly-formed team.

For some live service titles that have actually managed to get out the door and continue to impress, consult our guides to the best co-op games and the best free PC games – you’ll find a few there.

You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or join our community Discord to stay in the know.