Summary
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Days Gone director John Garvin sympathizes with Bend Studio over its recently canceled live-service game.
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Garvin believes Bend Studio's developers had “no choice” when it came to PlayStation's decision to cancel the project.
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Bend Studio is currently determining the next project, and there is a possibility that the team will return to single-player games.
Following the recent cancellation of Bend Studio's live services project, Days Gone director John Garvin expressed his empathy for the PlayStation core team. Even though Garvin left Bend Studio in 2020 due to rumors of internal turmoil surrounding a Days Gone sequel, the former director still seems to have a soft spot for developers working at the studio.
It was recently reported that PlayStation has canceled two upcoming live service projects from Bluepoint Games and Bend Studio, two of the platform holder's primary teams. While the time and resources wasted on these now-cancelled projects are regrettable, the cancellation of Bend Studio's game was a bigger sting for many PlayStation fans. Bend Studio was last released Days Gone in 2019, after which there was supposedly some turmoil among the studio's management regarding the continuation of the game. This eventually led to the departure of both Jeff Ross and John Garvin Days Gonehis executives and Bend Studio got to work on a brand new IP.
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Bend Studio didn't reveal much about its original project, other than that it would use it Days Goneits open-world systems and include multiplayer elements. In December 2024, however, some UI concept art suggested that Bend Studio's next game was a live-duty military shooter. Now that the project has been cancelled, Days Gone director John Garvin recently took to Twitter to sympathize with the affected Bend Studio staffstating that “this is a time for empathy,” regardless of anyone's views on live gaming or PlayStation's core strategy. Garvin added that he hopes for the best for Bend Studio, a sentiment that will no doubt be appreciated by developers.
Days Gone director John Garvin suggests developers Bend Studio had no choice in canceling the game recently
In a separate thread, Garvin responded to a tweet about the PlayStation community's alleged disdain for first-party games with live services, saying that while the notion is “true,” it doesn't make it “any less disappointing for developers who they don't have a choice.” Garvin apparently believes that Sony itself chose to end development of Bend Studio's live-service game rather than the developers, which may be true, as the cancellation occurred after a recent overhaul of the PlayStation portfolio from the first part.
PlayStation is said to be working closely with Bend Studio to best determine what project the studio should tackle next. Given that PlayStation's live services efforts have stumbled majorly in recent years, it seems quite plausible that Bend Studio would go back to its roots and develop a single-player game, perhaps even the most requested. Days Gone continuation. Unfortunately, the extended development cycles of AAA games make it very likely that PlayStation fans won't hear of Bend Studio until several years after the PS6 generation.