Sony has announced that they have bought Firewalk Studios. This is where some former Destiny 1 developers work who left Bungie after then boss Harold Ryan left or was left by Activision in 2016. The studio is said to be developing a new “AAA multiplayer game” for PlayStation 5, apparently a service game like Destiny.
What studio is this? Firewalk is a studio founded in 2018. It was previously part of “Probably Monsters”, a group of top developers with many former Destiny employees.
The idea behind Probably Monsters is to unite several game studios under one roof and develop their own brands there. The teams should develop freely and Probably Monsters would then take care of other parts of the business. Now Firewalk is sold to Sony, so the studio is spun off from Probably Monsters:
The key people at Firewalk were former Bungie employees such as:
The studio now has about 150 developers.
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Sony has been working with Firewalk since 2021 – Plant Service game offensive
Why is Sony buying the studio? Firewalk and Sony have been working together since April 2021. Sony is apparently convinced of the people there. They say Firewalk takes an innovative approach to storytelling and is “committed to quality gameplay.”
The purchase of Firewalk is part of Sony’s plan to move into the “live service” area, where they are planning 10 new games for PlayStation 5 and also bought Bungie in January 2022.
What do the developers say? Tony Hsu says they have a fantastic team, work well with Sony and are excited to harness the “incredible creative power” of the PlayStation Studio network. Now you can turn your vision into reality.
His previous boss, Harold Ryan, says he is proud of the team and the game that has taken years to develop. You would be very happy for the team.
CEO walked away from Bungie very quietly in 2016
Why did they all leave Bungie back then? To this day, we don’t really know. Harold Ryan left Bungie in early 2016. That was the time when it became clear that Activision Blizzard’s crazy master plan would not be fulfilled and Destiny 2 would not be released in 2016 as planned.
Maybe Microsoft was happy with Bungie at the time, or maybe the Bungie folks were tired of working to that tough schedule. Destiny was later rebooted. But it is not known whether Ryan’s departure was related to all of this or whether he simply wanted to do something different after 16 years.
Ironically in retrospect, Ryan went after 2015, which is now considered “the golden age of Destiny” – for some fans, Destiny has never been better than with The Taken King, which was released in September 2015.
In the years that followed, some familiar faces left Bungie and moved on to Probably Monsters: Ryan also based his company in Seattle, where Bungie also works.
Anyway, Ryan’s company then raised $200 million in record time and developed new games. But none of that has been seen yet. Maybe now that of Firewalk.
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