PlayStation is Shutting Down Dark Outlaw Games - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 24 March 2026 / 3,977 Views
Sony Interactive Entertainment is shutting down Dark Outlaw Games, according to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier via social media.
Dark Outlaw Games was founded by former Treyarch co-studio head Jason Blundell. He was a lead creator on the Zombies mode in Call of Duty before leaving Activision Blizzard in 2020 after 13 years.
PlayStation is also making other cuts that includes mobile development. Around 50 employees are being laid off.
"More layoffs today: PlayStation is closing Dark Outlaw Games, a studio formed last year by former Call of Duty lead Jason Blundel," said Schreier. "PlayStation is also making other cuts including in mobile development. Around 50 people laid off."
A user on ResetEra that broke the story before Schreier claims Dark Outlaw Games was in the early stages of development of its first project.
This is second studio closed by PlayStation in as many months with the announcement Bluepoint Games would be shutting down. Around 70 employees have lost their jobs at Bluepoint.
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 follow the author on Bluesky.
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I wasn't even aware of this studio.
Now any time I hear of Sony buying or starting a new studio I no longer feel excitement but fear that their days are numbered.
I wish Sony and MS had spent all that acquisition money on growing and bolstering their own teams for single player IP
Or bought and fostered talented smaller AA development teams (Like BLUEPOINT...)
Or bought and fostered talented smaller AA development teams (Like BLUEPOINT...)
For what, shut them all down in a few years? Let's be happy Sony didn't buy studios like Supermassive, Ember Labs and Shift Up. The most likely is they won't live 10 years under current So y management.
That was specifically why I said "Fostered Talent" lol
They may have bought Bluepoint... but they didn't foster/nurture the talent
I agree with you, knowing full well the 80bil spent on ABK and Bethesda by MS would fund the production of like 200 studios with 200mil budget with 40 billion to spare but Sony didn't buy this studio, they set it up.
At some point there will be no developers left and all games will be made by AI.
Well this example has little to nothing to do with AI
And the market will only provide what people support
If gamers quit buying AI generated games... they wont make them anymore
Maybe Im out of the loop, but which recent games have been AI made?
Yeah, I didn't word that the best
I didn't mean AI generated 100% but rather partially (Textures, Sound/OST, Animations)
Although I'm sure publishers are trying to push towards 100% generation more everyday lol
We would need to see way more closures than this to get to that point. At the rate games are coming out I can't keep up and I'm one of the most hardcore gamers I know. The reality is there are just way way to many games and not enough people to support them. Steam had almost 19,000 games released last year. How in the world can a system like that possibly survive?
Expect to see more and more closure like this until we reach a point where it was like in the 360 days where you actually went a month or so with nothing to play.
Oh Goddamn it, that was barely a year! They didn't even get ONE game out! WTF, Sony?!?
Another one!!!
Lmao didn't even get a game announced and shut down already game which is probably another live service
So early on in their existence, any work could easily be switched no matter what they were working on. Maybe they just weren't offering anything?
We will never know what game they were trying to make the only thing I hope is that this is Sony finally axing the whole live service bananza that Jim put in motion
They paid a years wages and setting up a studio for what?
To let them prototype and pitch a project. They didn’t like the product obviously, so moved on. This situation is not exactly a big deal.
So Sony is as bad as Ms . They didn't even get a chance to make their first project
Crystal Dynamics laid off staff today as well. Its bad across the board.
