Live service games are a mixed bag that can become cash cows with seemingly endless revenue, or fail miserably only to bring great loathing from players who see their favorite franchise dismantled into its bare essentials or feel their time and money have been wasted on a shallow clone for a cash grab.

Publishers aren't ready to let go of live service game development with a recent report finding that 33% of publishers are currently working on one.

Sony reportedly shelves yet another one of its live-service games, marking its 11th such project cancellation in only three years.

According to a new report, Bend and Bluepoint developers knew their projects were being canceled at the same time everyone else did.

Just a week after Sony canceled two live service games, it seems another PlayStation property set to get a multiplayer spinoff has been canned. A massively multiplayer online version of PlayStation's Horizon Zero Dawn from South Korean developer NCSoft has reportedly been canceled following an internal review.

Reports noted that two live service games being developed at Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games were scrapped, and the staff found out the day of.

PlayStation was once aiming to have 12 first-party live service games all operating by 2026, with revenue from these games providing over half of Sony Interactive Entertainment's revenue. Of course, Sony's thought process back in 2022 — the majority of its games are big and increasingly expensive single-player titles that don't generate recurring revenue,

The teams at Bend and Bluepoint reportedly found out their projects had been canceled at the same time as everyone else.