PlayStation Shuts Down Jason Blundell's Dark Outlaw Games Before First Title

Jason Blundell's PlayStation studio Dark Outlaw Games has been shut down, Sony announced internally on Tuesday. The Treyarch veteran, known for his work on Call of Duty Zombies, was tapped to build the studio after Sony previously canceled a prior project of his that was part of a publishing deal with Deviation Games.

Blundell was instrumental in the creation of Call of Duty's massively popular Zombies mode during his time at Treyarch, and he directed 2015's Black Ops 3. Almost exactly a year ago, Sony and PlayStation Studios announced the founding of Dark Outlaw Games under the PS Studios banner. The studio was to be led by Blundell, who had co-founded Deviation Games, an independent studio initially said to be working on a live service game for PlayStation.

When Dark Outlaw launched, Blundell told Jeff Gerstmann: "I've had the amazing opportunity to create a new studio within PlayStation Studios for Sony. The studio is called Dark Outlaw. We've been working away in the shadows for a while, when we've got something to talk about we'll step out into the light." He added, "It's such a privilege to be able to do it with Sony as a new first-party studio. Sony doesn't start up first-party studios all the time, so to have that privilege is humbling."

Sony's own careers page described the studio's ambition as building "the next groundbreaking AAA original IP" as part of a "lean and highly efficient" development setup. First spotted on ResetEra, user J-Soul shared that Dark Outlaw had been in the early stages of what was to be its debut project, though PlayStation clearly decided not to continue with it. The studio's game was never revealed, and Sony's careers page still had a job listing up for Dark Outlaw at the time news of the closure broke.

The pattern leading to this closure is hard to ignore. Prior to forming Dark Outlaw Games, Blundell had co-founded Deviation Games to make a live-service game that would be published by Sony. Sources told Kotaku that the initial budget for that project was over $200 million, but Sony later pulled funding amid a messy development cycle, leading that startup to unravel back in 2024. Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier was careful to clarify the distinction between the two ventures: "Deviation Games was not owned by PlayStation; it was making a game for PlayStation. Deviation shut down before releasing that game, then PlayStation hired Blundell to start a new studio, which was shut down today."

The Los Angeles-based Dark Outlaw Games was born from the ashes of the Deviation situation, a studio partnered with PlayStation and working on a first-party project before it was closed. LinkedIn listed Dark Outlaw at 11 to 50 employees. Alongside the Dark Outlaw closure, PlayStation also made other cuts, including in mobile development, with around 50 staff affected. On the strategy behind those mobile cuts, the ResetEra user who first reported the story noted that PlayStation was beginning to move away from the mobile market, while still supporting previously announced titles like MLB The Show Mobile and Ratchet & Clank: Ranger Rumble.

This marks the second PlayStation studio closure of 2026, as Bluepoint Games announced its closure in February. It continues what observers are calling a dreadful run of Sony decision-making, which has seen the company acquire and shutter a slew of studios across the PS5 generation. Given Blundell's history with Call of Duty Zombies, it was widely assumed Dark Outlaw Games would have been working on some kind of first-person shooter, though no project details were ever confirmed publicly. The studio went dark for good before it ever stepped into the light.