PlayStation has reportedly closed Dark Outlaw Games, a first-party studio led by Call of Duty: Black Ops veteran Jason Blundell. The studio had been working on a new, AAA IP since 2025. The closure is said to be part of wider layoffs at the company, some of which also affect mobile development.
"PlayStation is closing Dark Outlaw Games, a studio formed last year by former Call of Duty lead Jason Blundell," according to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, posting on Bluesky. Schreier adds, "PlayStation is also making other cuts including in mobile development. Around 50 people laid off."
Schreier's post follows an apparent leak on the forum ResetEra, which made similar claims, and added that PlayStation is scaling back on mobile development outside of "a few select high impact projects."
Little is known about Dark Outlaw's game, other than the fact that it would have been a "AAA console title," according to a job listing. That listing for a senior concept artist created some controversy when it surfaced, since it called for someone with "advanced expertise in using generative AI tools such as Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, ChatGPT, or similar platforms" to help conceptualize the game.
Blundell is best known as one of the leads behind the Zombies modes for Black Ops. He worked at Treyarch for over a decade before leaving in 2020 to found Deviation Games, which was set to make a new title in partnership with PlayStation. Blundell left Deviation in 2022, and the developer was eventually shut down in 2024 – a few months after he'd founded Dark Outlaw Games as a first-party PlayStation studio.
The report comes just over a month after Sony shut down remake and remaster maestro Bluepoint. A few years ago, the company announced extensive plans for new live service games, but killed Bluepoint's live service God of War title in 2025.
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