PlayStation Partner Deviation Games Has Shut Down - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 May 2024 / 4,971 Views
Update:
Deviation Games chief human resources and operations officer Kriste Stull has confirmed via LinkedIn the studio has shut down.
"It is with a heavy heart that we announce the closure of Deviation Games," said Stull. "I want to express my deepest gratitude to our entire team. Thank you for all your hard work, dedication, and contributions to Deviation; I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have worked with each and every one of you.
"To the entire video game industry, we will be hosting a networking event, and we would love for any/all companies/studios hiring to participate. Please reach out to me directly if you are interested in attending.
"To all the Deviators out there, we will always cherish the memories we made together. Thank you for being a part of our journey. Go get 'em!"
Original article:
Deviation Games has reportedly shut down, according to employees on LinkedIn.
"After the closure of Deviation Games last Friday, I’m actively seeking Senior Character Artist roles!," said former Deviation Games Senior Character Artist via LinkedIn. "Looking forward to landing somewhere awesome."
Former Lead User Interface Engineer at Deviation Games Andrew Carroll on LinkedIn stated, "After the closure of Deviation Games last Friday, I find myself open to new opportunities again. I am especially sad as I had just joined the team and they are a fantastic group of individuals. Our time together was far too short."
The studio signed a partnership with Sony Interactive Entertainment to develop a brand-new original IP. Co-founder Jason Blundell, the former co-studio head at Call of Duty developer Treyarch, who ended up leaving in September 2022.
Deviation Games was hit with layoffs in May 2023 with reports of as many as 90 employees being let go.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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sony really messed these guys up.. pulled their funding and stole some of their best people.. savage.
Damn didn't even get to release a game.
Bungie straight up killed them by giving them a thumbs down.
and you're basing this on what exactly?
The co-founder is supposedly working with Sony on something else.
Oh I don;t know, how about the only solid reporting on the matter? From Jason Schreier's reporting we know for a fact that Bungie was brought in to evaluate all the prospective live service titles and Last of Us factions getting cancelled was the direct result as well as sony purchasing firewalk and haven studios. meanwhile deviation games had they project cancelled according to MULTIPLE sources and even a year ago it was known that they'd be shutting down. Co-founder job posting means absoluttely nothign to the studio if their project is cancelled and they are shut down.
How is it solid reporting if there is zero news or even speculation that Bungie were involved in any fashion whatsoever with Deviation?
We don't even know if they were making a live service game to begin with.
You're just making up stuff for the sake of doing so. Unless there's actual news I missed?
Bungie makes fun and profitable services so you can't blame a company to ask for their opinion about theirs. You could say "So profitable they (not Sony) decided to fire people when the last DLC flopped" and you would be completely right, Destiny 2 has been a mess of bad decision but Destiny 2 is a finished project. Marathon is on the horizon and better to learn the hard way now than making a mess of your next project. And oh boy they are learning, they know what implies for their independence the success of the last DLC and Destiny 2 is starting to get free stuff before the release of the DLC to keep the playerbase happy.
ND is VERY good at making games, the TLOU multiplayer was in development since before TLOU2 release, that tells you the game was a in development hell way before Bungie evaluated it and its cancellation was probably the best because before Bungie the project was following The Last Guardian path, just a waste of money, time and talent that eventually people would only criticize instead of saying thank you for keeping it alive.
Deviation was done the day they lost their co-funder because Sony wanted to work with Deviation for that guy, so whatever happened at Deviation that made the guy leave was their last mistake. When you work in a partnership there are contracts to protect both parties. If you are giving money to someone so they can work for you and the work isn't what you were expecting you don't have any responsibility to keep giving them money, that's how business works. (Again, nothing to do with Bungie).
But you know who actually got the Bungie approval? Helldivers. Helldivers 2 is not only the best ps multiplayer since the ps3 era is also a game that doesn't force you to spend money in it and also a megahit so if all the projects that got "thumbs up" are half what Helldivers 2 is then good for Sony and Bungie.
People losing their jobs will never be good but things are WAY more complicated than "Yeah Bungie didn't like it because they used S instead of Z in the tittle so Sony fired the devs and their kids" lol.
The game was cancelled a year ago, they spent the last year trying to get a new publishing deal I believe.
Why? They thought about making a game with the main character being a beautiful girl in a sexy outfit but sony said "here at Sony, we hate beautiful girls, so players are not allowed to like beautiful girls neither!", or what?
Hey, and don't forget that "Play has no limit", right.....?
Sad news
I'm pretty new to this site so I don't know if the news were here but there were rumors since at least last year that Sony stopped giving money to these guys lol. Rumor that was only backed up after the fact (no rumor) that Sony started employing Deviation devs to work directly for Sony, included Jason Blundell the Deviation co-funder.
Do we know who he works for?
Not yet, all the ex deviation who are working for Sony have SIE in their Linkedin but the guy who made public Jason was working at Sony said he was working for him so it looks like Sony gave him the control of whatever they are doing.
Did Sony poach Deviation leads or something? lol
At the end of the day it's better to cancel an unsure project rather than release garbage
