Sony Shuts Down PlayStation Studio Led by Call of Duty Veteran
▼ Summary
– Sony has shut down Jason Blundell’s PlayStation studio, Dark Outlaw Games, announcing the closure internally.
– Blundell, a Treyarch veteran known for Call of Duty Zombies, had founded the studio as a first-party PlayStation Studios team just a year prior.
– This follows Sony’s recent closure of Bluepoint Games, part of a trend of shuttering studios acquired during the PS5 generation.
– Before Dark Outlaw, Blundell co-founded Deviation Games for a Sony-published live-service game with a budget over $200 million.
– Sony later pulled funding from that Deviation Games project, leading to its unraveling in 2024 amid a messy development cycle.
Sony has terminated operations at Dark Outlaw Games, a first-party studio led by veteran developer Jason Blundell. The internal announcement, made this week, marks the end of a venture that began with significant promise just last year. Blundell, renowned for his influential work on the Call of Duty Zombies mode at Treyarch, was originally brought on to establish a new team under the PlayStation Studios banner.
In a 2025 interview, Blundell expressed his enthusiasm for the rare opportunity. He described the privilege of launching a new first-party studio for Sony, a company that does not frequently establish such internal teams. The studio, operating quietly under the name Dark Outlaw, was intended to emerge publicly when it had a substantial project to reveal.
This closure follows a troubling pattern for Sony’s studio strategy. It arrives merely a month after the shuttering of Bluepoint Games, contributing to a series of failed acquisitions and closures during the current console generation. The move underscores the volatile environment within major platform holders’ development ecosystems.
Blundell’s partnership with Sony predates Dark Outlaw. He previously co-founded Deviation Games, which secured a major publishing deal with Sony for a live-service title. According to reports, that project initially commanded a budget exceeding $200 million. However, Sony ultimately withdrew its financial support following a difficult development period, leading to Deviation’s collapse in 2024. The closure of Dark Outlaw represents another setback in this ongoing collaborative relationship, leaving the future of Blundell’s ambitious concepts uncertain.
(Source: Kotaku)
