Bend Studios Live Service Title Made No Progress In 3 Years Says Ex-Dev, Cancellation Was Expected

LectureMaster

LectureMaster

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Bend Studios Live Service Title Made No Progress In 3 Years Says Ex-Dev, Cancellation Was Expected

An animator working on the live-service Bend Studios title, the team did not make enough substantial progress in the 3 years of development.
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Sony Bend's PS5 Game Cancellation Could Be Seen Coming, Says Ex Dev

Didn't make "enough substantial progress" in three years
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A former employee of Days Gone developer Bend Studio has commented that the cancellation of the team's live service game could be seen coming prior to it being made official.

According to Robert Morrison, who spent almost three years at the developer (from July 2022 to June 2025) as a senior animator said the following in regards to the new IP: "We didn't make enough substantial progress over the 3 years I was there. I saw the eventual cancellation coming prior to it."

On his LinkedIn page, Morrison lists a cancelled Sony Bend project as "Mirror Pond", and he was involved in "hand keyed and mocap based gameplay animation for main player characters and NPCs". Using the Decima engine, he had "close collaboration with programmers and designers to prototype, build, improve and refine numerous gameplay systems".

Morrison now works for Ready or Not studio Void Interactive, and has also contributed to Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, God of War, and The Last of Us Part I.

The new IP from Sony Bend was cancelled alongside a project from Bluepoint Games, which was heavily rumoured to be a God of War live service title. This leaked at the start of the week, with screenshots revealing environments and scenic items.
 
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If they didn't make substantial progress in three years, what the hell were they doing? Or does that mean they were working on other projects at the same time?
 
Better than Perfect Dark studio. That game was first worked on in 2018 and after 7 years the studio and game got cancelled. Nice grift. There's going to be people there who worked there for a long time who made over $1M of salary and the net result was zero.

I wasted my time doing business and finance as a career. Every job you do youre expected to jump in and give results fast. You'll get a month to get acquainted and learn the company and talk with people. Then youre part of the finance team whose got shit to do ad hoc, or in set time periods (monthly or quarterly due dates).

Anyone know of any finance jobs I can go let's say 5 years, get paid and have nothing to show for?
 
I can't understand these kind of work conditions/goals. I understand that some things take time, but specially being a physician, I can't understand how you keep working and deliver nothing and that's "fine" for some time?
 
Theres something fishy about a lack of progress during whole 3 years.
I think this could be all intentional on their part by not wanting to be forced to follow that route.
 
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Whoever left at Sony made all these studios go do live service needs to be sacked. Alot of these studios obviously weren't equipped our experienced to do live service.
 
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Still don't get it how it is even imaginable to work on something for 3 year without a clear vision of how the fu*k the game should play like... Modern game development seems totally out of touch with reality and good business practices
 
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envyzeal said:
I can't understand these kind of work conditions/goals. I understand that some things take time, but specially being a physician, I can't understand how you keep working and deliver nothing and that's "fine" for some time?
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Its quite simple really. You end up running around in circles chasing "X". Where "X" is the whatever the initial intention was.

People who've never worked in dev think if you build a bunch of tech and assets, glue it together with some mechanics and voila! You have a game.

Whereas a lot of the time you just end up with an uninspiring, uninteresting pile of shit that you know is fundamentally not worth pursuing because you know its never going to be "X".
So you refactor, and iterate, but like chasing smoke you're always close enough to smell it, but its never quite in reach.

Inside corporate dev, where the pressure to actually get something out the door isn't a constant existential need this cycle can persist for literally years. Because people show up, try their best, and take a pay-check at the end of the month even when there's nothing much in the way of progress to the goal.
 
Clear said:
Its quite simple really. You end up running around in circles chasing "X". Where "X" is the whatever the initial intention was.

People who've never worked in dev think if you build a bunch of tech and assets, glue it together with some mechanics and voila! You have a game.

Whereas a lot of the time you just end up with an uninspiring, uninteresting pile of shit that you know is fundamentally not worth pursuing because you know its never going to be "X".
So you refactor, and iterate, but like chasing smoke you're always close enough to smell it, but its never quite in reach.

Inside corporate dev, where the pressure to actually get something out the door isn't a constant existential need this cycle can persist for literally years. Because people show up, try their best, and take a pay-check at the end of the month even when there's nothing much in the way of progress to the goal.
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The Office Thank You GIF
 
Topher said:
If I had to guess then I'd say their heart just wasn't in it. Seems obvious to me that Sony's studios were mandated to go the live service route against their will. Pure speculation on my part obviously.
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Thought the same, like some kind of very subtle strike
 
Clear said:
Its quite simple really. You end up running around in circles chasing "X". Where "X" is the whatever the initial intention was.

People who've never worked in dev think if you build a bunch of tech and assets, glue it together with some mechanics and voila! You have a game.

Whereas a lot of the time you just end up with an uninspiring, uninteresting pile of shit that you know is fundamentally not worth pursuing because you know its never going to be "X".
So you refactor, and iterate, but like chasing smoke you're always close enough to smell it, but its never quite in reach.

Inside corporate dev, where the pressure to actually get something out the door isn't a constant existential need this cycle can persist for literally years. Because people show up, try their best, and take a pay-check at the end of the month even when there's nothing much in the way of progress to the goal.
Click to expand...

That's a good insight that goes well with some things we read all the time, specially when they say things like "lack of vision" "issues with leadership" and it all looks like bad management (as a cause or when it fails to correct a route).
 
Clear said:
Its quite simple really. You end up running around in circles chasing "X". Where "X" is the whatever the initial intention was.

People who've never worked in dev think if you build a bunch of tech and assets, glue it together with some mechanics and voila! You have a game.

Whereas a lot of the time you just end up with an uninspiring, uninteresting pile of shit that you know is fundamentally not worth pursuing because you know its never going to be "X".
So you refactor, and iterate, but like chasing smoke you're always close enough to smell it, but its never quite in reach.

Inside corporate dev, where the pressure to actually get something out the door isn't a constant existential need this cycle can persist for literally years. Because people show up, try their best, and take a pay-check at the end of the month even when there's nothing much in the way of progress to the goal.
Click to expand...
I think in modern day if you look at graphics or sound quality in isolation (like screenshots or a promo video), it seems pretty good. Unless someone cares that much about 4k textures or Dolby Atmos quality sound, I think most of it passes.... unless it's something truly heinous like ugly art style or worst dialogue script or politics ever.

The key thing that messes it up is lousy gameplay, bugs, shitty MP netcode and stuff like that.

So if the visuals and audio depts do their parts well, wouldnt it mean the people in charge of gameplay (both coding and vision) be the ones at fault? Or at least most of the time? I dont know. Just asking.
 
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Live service push/initiative is/was fine. They should have spun up new studios with experienced people instead of putting it on ND, Bluepoint, Bend, etc.
 
Was it feature creep, changes to the initial vision due to outside influence (i.e., Marketing or Agenda folks), or simply an inability of management to get workers to hit deadlines? I cannot believe a AAA studio would go to work without a production schedule, or that they would allow a project to miss the production schedule so badly that it would be cancelled. Failure to fire unproductive employees?

I don't see a need to blame the people who actually worked at Bend. Management is always to blame when targets are missed.
 
Loomy said:
Live service push/initiative is/was fine. They should have spun up new studios with experienced people instead of putting it on ND, Bluepoint, Bend, etc.
Click to expand...

They did that with Firewalk. Personally, I think what they did with Arrowhead was the correct scenario for PlayStation.
 
LectureMaster said:

tech4gamers.com

Bend Studios Live Service Title Made No Progress In 3 Years Says Ex-Dev, Cancellation Was Expected

An animator working on the live-service Bend Studios title, the team did not make enough substantial progress in the 3 years of development.
tech4gamers.com tech4gamers.com
www.pushsquare.com

Sony Bend's PS5 Game Cancellation Could Be Seen Coming, Says Ex Dev

Didn't make "enough substantial progress" in three years
www.pushsquare.com www.pushsquare.com

A former employee of Days Gone developer Bend Studio has commented that the cancellation of the team's live service game could be seen coming prior to it being made official.

According to Robert Morrison, who spent almost three years at the developer (from July 2022 to June 2025) as a senior animator said the following in regards to the new IP: "We didn't make enough substantial progress over the 3 years I was there. I saw the eventual cancellation coming prior to it."

On his LinkedIn page, Morrison lists a cancelled Sony Bend project as "Mirror Pond", and he was involved in "hand keyed and mocap based gameplay animation for main player characters and NPCs". Using the Decima engine, he had "close collaboration with programmers and designers to prototype, build, improve and refine numerous gameplay systems".

Morrison now works for Ready or Not studio Void Interactive, and has also contributed to Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, God of War, and The Last of Us Part I.

The new IP from Sony Bend was cancelled alongside a project from Bluepoint Games, which was heavily rumoured to be a God of War live service title. This leaked at the start of the week, with screenshots revealing environments and scenic items.
Click to expand...

so just like Perfect Dark what the hell were they doing?
 
Topher said:
They did that with Firewalk. Personally, I think what they did with Arrowhead was the correct scenario for PlayStation.
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Yeah and when Firewall fails, you lose some money. Big deal, right?

With Bend, ND, and BP, you also dev time and resources that could have been spent on things those studios do well.
 
Loomy said:
Yeah and when Firewall fails, you lose some money. Big deal, right?

With Bend, ND, and BP, you also dev time and resources that could have been spent on things those studios do well.
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I'm not disagreeing with you that Bend, ND, etc shouldn't have been thrown this stuff. I just think Helldivers 2 is a good template to follow.
 
Topher said:
I'm not disagreeing with you that Bend, ND, etc shouldn't have been thrown this stuff. I just think Helldivers 2 is a good template to follow.
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Oh we're completely on the same page. Forgot to touch on Helldivers, but yeah. That's a lower risk approach for sure.
 
Unless Sony had some hate boner for Factions 2 (which wouldnt make sense since Factions 1 seemed to be good), I dont understand why Sony didnt commit resources to Factions 2.

If ND needed more people and money to support a live service game, then shift over some of those giant globs of money they had to spend on other games and studios and there could had been a Factions 2.

And when it comes to shooters, people like grounded games. Ultra sci-fi stuff is hit and miss, and WWII is long gone except for some budget shooters sticking to WWII like Enlisted or gamers still playing BF1 or COD WWII.

There must had been some kind of veto power Druckmann had where he called the shots on F2. Or maybe Sony didnt want to commit big money for a real gritty shooter like F1 was.
 
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Shit, I'm beginning to feel sharks in the water and they're surrounding Bend studios. Days Gone has undoubtedly become a commercial success for Sony over the years, despite bombing at launch due to the amount of bugs it had and people being too smooth-brained to understand the reason behind Deacon St John being a douchebag. Now that Deacon has matured through the course of the plot and has actually become a decent guy, I feel like it would be the perfect moment for Sony to task them with a sequel, as long as they keep using the UE4 fork that they used in the PS5 remaster of Days Gone, since it was already pretty good at handling open world, whereas UE5 isn't. Plus it wouldn't be hard to tack on a multiplayer mode to it, just do what Naughty Dog did for TLOU 1, and add a horde mode as well.
 
Victorboris1987 said:
Shit, I'm beginning to feel sharks in the water and they're surrounding Bend studios. Days Gone has undoubtedly become a commercial success for Sony over the years, despite bombing at launch due to the amount of bugs it had and people being too smooth-brained to understand the reason behind Deacon St John being a douchebag. Now that Deacon has matured through the course of the plot and has actually become a decent guy, I feel like it would be the perfect moment for Sony to task them with a sequel, as long as they keep using the UE4 fork that they used in the PS5 remaster of Days Gone, since it was already pretty good at handling open world, whereas UE5 isn't. Plus it wouldn't be hard to tack on a multiplayer mode to it, just do what Naughty Dog did for TLOU 1, and add a horde mode as well.
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Media Molecule is in an even worse spot.
Somebody needs to sort these studios out.
 
3 years no progress? I rarely stay at one job for three years. Bust out 2-3 projects and leap frog. Industrial gaming needs to collapse. Deserves to.
 
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