London Studio's PS5 Live Service Fantasy Co-Op Game Will Never See the Light of Day

Like many here I was never chomping at the bit for Sony's big live service push, but somehow it now seems we've lost all the most exciting live service projects (The Last of Us, Twisted Metal, this) and have been left with Fairgame$$$$ and Concord, from which all we've seen is a terrible CGI ubi-style trailer and jiggly burger. What a sad twist of fate.

Cancelling an unknown title that no one had seen is less troubling than cancelling two well know franchises (Twisted Metal and Last of Us Multiplayer).

Last of Us Multiplayer was highly anticipated by the fans, could have been a stand alone game, and would have made money (and likely wasn’t that far off).

Twisted Metal had its own TV show. So it seems baffling these projects have gone.

Is Sony bowing to the shareholders rather than being “For the Players”?

@Kienda Twisted Metal was apparently given to Lucid games first but after the failure of Destruction AllStars went to Firesprite. So that means they basically restarted from scratch two years later. They must've just reached early production by this point. Also, it was never officially announced so it is irrelevant to the public.

Factions was definitely nearly done from what I've read online. I wonder if that one was stopped because the monetisation wasn't working out or if they felt ND were better off working on SP and didn't want to pawn it off to a support studio.

Again Sony can't do no wrong.

"in the case of London Studio’s game, though, it’s difficult to be disappointed about the cancellation of a game we only ever saw one piece of artwork for"
You should be shouting from the roof tops as Sony is struggling to release games as it is 🤔. So another possible two cancellations ain't gonna solve the problem. But if your gonna give them a free pass don't complain when Sony's first party is a barren as Xbox's was years ago.

From a simple perspective it looks like execs directed studios to make live service game as that was perceived to be the cash cow. Customers don't want these and so the burden of this failed decision falls on the workers at the coal face, whilst those responsible for the mis direction pick up their huge bonuses..... It is ever thus.

@Kienda I mean if Im being honest it's a good thing that Factions was cancelled otherwise like ND stated, they would have to give up making SP games.

It was a bad trend to chase, especially shifting studio focus to produce at least 9 of them all together.

Why Jim is taking that early retirement, hiroki doki ithe cold money man is having to clean up shop before the new guy comes in

It’s likely an unpopular opinion, but this current generation of Series X and PS5 sucks in comparison to previous gen’s.

I miss the games and experiences the 360/PS3 generation delivered.

@OmegaStriver I mean youre not wrong. I genuinely couldnt tell you more than 5 games that I've played that either wasn't a remake or some basic PS5 upgrade for a ps4 game. MK1, Armored Core 6, Ff16, Spiderman 2 and that's probably it.

@Kienda

Is Sony bowing to the shareholders rather than being “For the Players”?

The directors of the company are legally bound by a fiduciary duty to only take actions that are to the benefit of the shareholders. The shareholders literally own the company, the directors are their agents as per the legal definition.

So yes, they are taking actions to maximise the wealth of the owners. It would actually be illegal for them to do otherwise. This applies to all companies in existence. This is how company law works.

People need to stop being so ignorant(naive). Only then can proper discussion follow.

It's all a bit concerning really. Hope Sony can turn this around, wasn't particularly excited for the LS push but couldn't imagine they'd cancel so many games.

@OmegaStriver I don’t think that’s an unpopular opinion at all. We are around the halfway point for any console generation now, and there isn’t much worth playing on PS5/XSX you can’t play on PS4/XB1, outside of Spider-Man 2 and Final Fantasy, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better any time soon with all these layoffs and cancellations.Neither PlayStation or Xbox is doing great, and I am not sure when the last generation was that both big hitters were in the gutter.

I support cancelling games that don't meet standards instead of releasing them to an unsuspecting public hoping to claw back some money.

@Kienda
How does this restructuring undervalue you as their customer? By optimisng their operations and trying to ensure quality releases of their products instead of bloated mediocre games in a financially unstable times?

@ZhuckelDror two games I was looking forward to have been cancelled.

That’s me as a customer affected/undervalued by their decisions.

Does it mean it was the wrong decision? I’m not saying that. But it does make me question if they value profits over me. And it’s not wrong for customers to be thinking that way.

I just checked their profile of games and in 22 years they didn't do much at all. Gateway was cool, but that's about it... Surprised they didn't close earlier

@Bamila the most sad part is that they have been subjected to something like this, based on their past games and what they have released, it's a shame they are not acknowledged for that.

But a popular fad is a fad, people go where the money is made the most

@ChrisDeku

I’m sorry, but you have shared false information.

You state:

The directors of the company are legally bound by a fiduciary duty to only take actions that are to the benefit of the shareholders… So yes, they are taking actions to maximise the wealth of the owners. It would actually be illegal for them to do otherwise.

This is wrong. It’s actually illegal to put profits of shareholders above the good of the company.

In business, the fiduciary duty of directors is to the company and is based upon the company’s code of conduct. In fact is it “illegal” for them to put shareholder profits higher than the company’s interests. If Sony’s policy read, “our code of conduct is ONLY to maximise shareholders profits,” then you’d have a point.

But we can read Sony’s own ‘Code of Conduct’ here: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/csr_report/compliance/code_of_conduct_En.pdf

They state that decisions must be made considering all stakeholders – this includes shareholders, but also customers, employees etc.

1.2 Relationship with Stakeholders
It is the core corporate responsibility of Sony to society to pursue its corporate value enhancement through innovation and sound business practices and contribute to developing a sustainable society. We will all give due consideration to the impact of our business activities on the interests of our stakeholders including shareholders, customers, employees, suppliers, business partners, local communities and other organizations.

They also say:

6.1 Sound Decision Making

Business decisions must be made on an informed basis, in good faith, and in the honest belief that the action taken is in the best interest of Sony. We will check and ensure that the decision to be made will satisfy at least the following preconditions:
(i) It will not violate any applicable law, regulation or internal rule or policy;
(ii) No personal interest or self-dealing is involved;
(iii) It is made within individual authority levels given by the corporation;
(iv) It is made with due care following a reasonable effort to become familiar with the relevant and available facts; and
(v) It is made in good faith based upon a reasonable belief that the best interests of Sony are served by the decision.

As you see, they are required to serve the best interests of Sony, not the shareholders.

7.2 Personal Conflicts of Interest

We must always act in Sony’s best interests and avoid any situation where our loyalties may be divided between Sony’s interests and our own interests – such as a financial or other business relationships with a supplier, customer or competitor – that would impair our independent judgment. Even if nothing wrong is intended, the appearance of a conflict can cause others to doubt our fairness and have a negative effect on Sony’s business.

I’d advise not calling people “naïve” or “ignorant” if you haven’t got your facts straight.

It is some absurd ultra-capitalist propaganda to make out it is “illegal” to not maximise profits for shareholders. And it is sad so many have liked a comment out of ignorance. Every company has to work within the constraints of their own policy.

To be clear: Sony’s own policy shows the directors must work in Sony’s interests before the interests of the shareholders.

That's no loss then, Sony really need a kick up the ass. And get back to what them great in the first place, they have definitely lost focus. Saying that the whole industry has, saturating the market with the same ***** every year, spiralling costs, longer dev times. The way its going things cannot be sustained. But no dev can afford to take risks this is the problem.

@Shepherd_Tallon 'Unfortunately because of Helldivers I also won't be surprised to see Sony pull the funding for any other live service project that isn't looking like a sure bet' Better to do that than commission 5+ Helldivers 2 clones white expecting them to all do as well as the original

@riceNpea This is the likely scenario here. This studio spent 20 years making mainly Singstar games. I believe they helped other studios in some support capacity on larger titles, but the reality is, this was their first attempt at a game of this type and it obviously failed massively to meet expectations.

It's sad when people lose their jobs and projects like this fail, but considering the entire studio was closed, I can't help but think that whatever they were doing for the past 5 years must have been extremely poor and viewed as an enormous waste of time and money.

People say HellDivers 2 is a massive hit, hasn't it sold around 3M on PS5 & PC?

Didn't Spiderman 2 sell more than that in it's first 5 days?

@AK4tywill Twisted Metal seem just about perfect for the live service treatment as well.

@Nepp67 Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart? In any case Insomniac has thus far been the MVP for Sony first party thus far for PS5. 2.5 solid games for PS5 (I'm going to count Miles Morales as the 1/2 game) vs. 1 or none from the rest of the studios.

@Kienda Like it or not money has to be made it's not a charity.

@riceNpea finally a rational comment. Sony clearly saw a lot of these games , i don't think they liked what they saw. Not only that but saw the reaction to live service games , and just didn't want to risk it.

@Shepherd_Tallon well the reality is both go hand and hand. a game is canceled , so people that were hired to work on those games they'll have to lay off. most of them were only hired for 1 game either way , and were not long term employees and they bounce around studios.

@TrickyDicky99 you're directly comparing the success of a AA, indie developed, budget-priced, live-service, multilayer game with a AAA, single player, full priced, 1st party, huge budget, world famous IP with huge amounts of money spent on advertising, and using the sales of Spider-Man 2 as the only metric as a measure whether or not HD2 should be considered a success?

Yes, HD2 is a big success just like Spider-Man 2, but many different reasons, including clearly exceeding projected sales figures considering how unprepared their servers were for the massive influx of players.

@riceNpea Sure Helldivers cost less to make but it's also being sold at nearly half the price and is also on PC while Spiderman 2 is only on PS5

@TrickyDicky99 One is a live service game that aims to continuously make money off of microtransactions, while the other is a single player game that will only make money off of its initial purchase.

@Flaming_Kaiser I agree. I’m not even saying it’s the wrong decision, but it’s a decision I don’t like.

The guy above though literally said that not making profits for shareholders “is illegal” and that’s just garbage. It’s actually illegal to prioritise the profits of shareholders over the needs of the company.

@IslandLogic One is a game that is a platform seller, one is on another platform with free online play.

@TrickyDicky99 those are the points I'm making! You're essentially agreeing with me that it's pointless to make the comparison in the first place and base it solely on sales.

The lack of a clear direction of where PlayStation is heading is truly sad.

@riceNpea I just find it strange that people are claiming Helldivers is a massive success at 3M sold at £35 across 2 platforms while Sony's AAA 1st party games that usually sell 10M+ and are platform sellers are not sustainable

@SamMR You're mistaken, they have a very clear direction, it's straight down the toilet!

@Serpentes420 Ahh true I forgot about Ratchet and Clank and I just remembered Returnal is a thing so that is 6.

While normally I say the less live service the better, it does suck for those who lost their jobs.

@TrickyDicky99 it's not a success JUST because it sold well, it's a success because it sold well, exceeded expectations, is a critical hit with reviewrs, is gorgeous to look at, has great game mechanics, excellent gameplay loop, is sensible with its microtransactions that are easy to earn in-game and reasonably priced if you choose to spend money (which is so simple to avoid), has obvious longterm potential with how it's set up as a game with communal targets with an inexhaustible supply of planets to conquer that will provide variety and challenges, is such a well liked game Xbox owners have petitioned Sony to release it on their platform.... the game has so much going for it I don't understand how you don't think it's a success JUST because Spider-Man sold more and has a higher profile.

@riceNpea I don't get how all of a sudden games like HD2 are a viable route yet the AAA bangers that sell more and at a higher price are not

@TrickyDicky99 who says? They're both viable and fill different niches within the spectrum of types of games people enjoy playing. The relative success of the two games in question proves that.

@riceNpea All I've heard for the past year is that Sony's AAA games are not sustainable

I won't cry for a lost live service game. We got more than enough of them.

@TrickyDicky99 like I said, says who?

@riceNpea You literally want their names? I mean Shawn Layden was the one who started it all. Most gaming publications have written articles saying it. Comment sections are filled with people saying it.

David Jaffe literally mentions it every other stream.

It's really a shame that this studio is closed. I really hope that Hermen will now ensure that old IPs see new light. Getaway for example. Since Hermen became Playstation studio boss, things have deteriorated quite rapidly. But that could be just me of course.

@TrickyDicky99 still don't see why it has anything to do with how we measure success for HD2

@riceNpea Well I'm sure Spiderman 2 has made more money than HD2

If games like Spiderman 2 aren't sustainable then how is games like HD2?

FYI I think 1st party AAA games are sustainable because their primary purpose is not to make as much money as possible, it's to get people onto the Playstation platform.

Game like HD2 are sustainable because they have much longer lifespans for earning revenue, evolve over time to stay fresh and offer new experiences, are cheaper to initially produce and develop, encourage platform player retention because of its fun and engaging gameplay...there's a lot of straight forward reasons why a game as well conceived as HD2 has longterm appeal.

@OmegaStriver yes! 7th generation is the GOAT. the ps360 era was an experience! so many new games dropping , new ips left and right, so much variety , & it revolutionized online gaming and introduced trophies/achievements. games were still 50-60 dollars, ps3 online was free and so was nintendo’s, and great games didn’t take up 100GB. games were only 7-15GB back then .

@Yukairi yup, it blows my mind how there’s some people that still think the ps3 generation was the worst because the ps5 is absolutely terrible

@Kienda We totally agree 100% on that it sucks that the real world doesn't work like that. Look at a thing like MW3 the laziest €70 monetised game that still sells like hotcakes it hurts my heart.

@nomither6 Yup.

I would go back to that experience in a heartbeat.