Yesterday, we learned that Sony and PlayStation had shut down yet another studio it had previously founded and added to the PlayStation Studios family. Dark Outlaw Games was founded by PlayStation in March 2025, and almost exactly a year later, PlayStation shut down Dark Outlaw Games, long before the studio had a chance to get its debut project out the door.
Which, according to Dark Outlaw Games studio head Jason Blundell, a former Call of Duty developer who was one of the key developers behind the first four Black Ops games, would have been "a hell of a game," and players would have been "very excited" to get their hands on it.
First reported by Kotaku, those comments come from Blundell, while appearing on a livestream with JCbackfire, who was a level designer at Dark Outlaw Games and, like Blundell, is now unemployed. The two talked about the shutdown without breaking their confidentiality agreements, which made them stop short of saying exactly what they were working on, but it's clear they believed they were making something that would've been appreciated by fans.
Especially because, as JCbackfire points out, the game they were making was not a live service game. "I loved the type of project we were working on," he says. "It wasn't a live service game, which, personally, I was really stoked about...just something that I really wanted to make. I wish I could talk more about it."
Ultimately, neither seemed to hold a grudge towards Sony, and that, more than anything, they miss being able to work on the project they had, with the people and the team dynamic they had. Blundell also made the point that this was not something they could have really seen coming. This decision, as they see it, didn't come down to a loss of faith in the studio's talents and abilities, but Sony deciding it no longer wanted to go down this path with Dark Outlaw Games.
"I can reassure you, and it's been reassured to me, it's just times change, focus changes, but the project we were doing and what we were doing, fans would have been very excited," Blundell said. "The best game is the one you've never played."
PlayStation simply changing direction also lines up with the reasoning given in the only official statement we've seen the company make on the matter. The official statement said that Sony made "several strategic adjustments to support long-term stability."
It's unfortunate that we're not even halfway through the year, and we've already seen thousands of video game developers get laid off, either through entire studio shutdowns and/or mass cuts across a major corporation. Dark Outlaw was the second studio under the PlayStation Studios banner to get shuttered this year after Bluepoint.
Hopefully, in the case of the team from Dark Outlaw, if all of those impacted feel as Blundell and JCbackfire do, that the team worked wonderfully together, we can see them come together for a fresh start elsewhere.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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