Developer Bend Studio's most recent game was Days Gone, which launched as a PlayStation 4 exclusive in April 2019 before coming to PC two years later. Bend Studio later confirmed that it was working on a new title, but the studio has yet to share any specific information about this project following the reveal.
The company has now dropped some indirect hints about the nature of its upcoming title; according to a recently surfaced Bend Studio recruitment ad, the developer's new title is a live service game. The ad refers to a vacancy for a "lead project manager," and the ad confirmed that the game is a live service game running on Unreal Engine 5. We don't know if this indicates an imminent reveal or what, but it does confirm the active work that the Days Gone developer is involved in.
Bend Studio appears to be part of Sony's direct-to-service games plan that the Japanese publisher announced in early 2022, and at the time the company said it aimed to release dozens of these games by March 2026, which corresponds to the end of its 2025 fiscal year. But half of PlayStation's live-service games have been delayed until the end of 2023, with Sony Group COO Hiroki Totoki citing quality concerns as a reason for the delay, as most of these upcoming titles have yet to be announced.
Despite the cancellation of work on The Last of Us service game, Helldivers 2 kicked off a successful run of service games for Sony, and we're certainly hoping for more after the title's overwhelming success.
