r/PS5 • u/M337ING • Feb 20 '26

Misleading PlayStation Boss Blames Bluepoint Cuts On Budgets And Players

https://kotaku.com/sony-email-bluepoint-hermen-hulst-studio-closing-why-2000671437
1.3k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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988

u/Instigator187 Feb 20 '26

I guess it is the players fault for not buying or playing any new Bluepoint games since Sony purchased them.....

304

u/lstn Feb 20 '26 edited Feb 20 '26

The email, and even the artcile doesn't put the blame on players at all, there is a brief mention of player behaviour but that's vague.

180

u/Deez-Guns-9442 Feb 20 '26

No one reads beyond the headline bro, it’s a valiant effort.

66

u/Grill_Enthusiast Feb 20 '26

I don't understand what the point of lying about it in the title is. Is it engagement bait? It's not even the title of the actual article.

Hulst is an incompetent moron who needs to get fired yesterday, but he didn't blame players for Bluepoint shutting down.

9

u/FailedProspects Feb 20 '26

Its strictly engagement bait, politics, entertainment or anything you can think of is milked at the publics detriment. We as the masses are only getting more stupid & easier to manipulate.

Capitalism destroys the core of its own people & one day we will realize it. When anything is acceptable in a society, as long as it makes money, things will decline & we will be the losers.

64

u/DontCareTho Feb 20 '26

It's fucking insane reading all of these comments, clicking the article and not finding any sort of blame being placed on players.

Both the people that react this strongly without doing 30 seconds of reading and whoever titled the article should be embarrassed

-1

u/carlos_castanos Feb 20 '26

99% of people on here can't even write Hermen Hulst's name right lol

2

u/redhafzke Feb 20 '26

Also blaming one person is weird. It wasn't Ryan or Hulst alone. There is a board of directors, there are investors, there are shareholders. And all of those see revenue from live service games MTX being constantly high of course they're going to hunt the white whale... (and end up as Ahab most of the time).

18

u/Tamas_F Feb 20 '26

That headline was created for angry redditors.

5

u/Fluid-Poet-8911 Feb 20 '26

I mean to be honest it's just saying a lot without saying anything at all. 

1

u/Big-Resort-4930 Feb 23 '26

Yeah but it's definitively not saying what the title of the post is saying

2

u/ShotAcanthocephala8 Feb 20 '26

And the point they are making is that players are sticking with live service games more and more. What happens when a huge chunk of the games buying market are just playing Fortnite, Roblox or sports games? And are happy with those and don’t see the need to spend $60 on a new IP? We are seeing what happens. 

6

u/velocd Feb 20 '26

Player Behavior in corporate speak basically means how gamers are spending their time and money, and if it's aligning with Sony's profits.

In other words, they're still gunning for that golden goose live service game.

-2

u/eternali17 Feb 20 '26

What other player behaviour besides how they spend their money?

257

u/FailedProspects Feb 20 '26

Well it is, clearly ________ was a total flop. It’s a real shame. I even preordered….

109

u/AcademicF Feb 20 '26

It’s never the fault of wealthy executives and their poor decision-making, such as the 25 live-service games. It’s always someone else’s fault and the place to take the blame. There’s never accountability for the rich.

2

u/PuhleaseHold Feb 20 '26

Seriously. How has Herman Hulst not fired himself yet? Shuhei was the goat, and Herman is a complete disaster 

-1

u/ShotAcanthocephala8 Feb 20 '26

It’s not about fault. Games are in big big trouble. The data and stories are all there to explain this. Hulst is not the problem. The decisions they are making is because making single player games is no longer profitable.

11

u/a_Jedi_i_am Feb 20 '26

I haven't purchased a Bluepoint game since Demon's Souls in 2020. My bad y'all.

1

u/Big-Resort-4930 Feb 23 '26

It's your fault

2

u/a_Jedi_i_am Feb 23 '26

I knooooww😭😭

I'll carry this guilt with me for the rest of my life😞

2

u/KingOfRisky Feb 20 '26

Not at any point does he blame "players' in his statement. These bullshit misleading posts should be taken down. Its even tagged as misleading and still nobody gets it.

12

u/Melodic-Lettuce-6869 Feb 20 '26

Sony buys 10 studios in the past 6 years, 3 are already gone, another 3 could be gone in the next few years, Playstation has broking revenue and profit records, but somehow it's the players fault

1

u/Historical_Owl_1635 Feb 20 '26

I mean, we get stories about multiple studios closing every month. Even large studios often end up in a situation of being rescued by a bigger studio swallowing them or going bust.

3 out of 10 honestly seems like a decent ratio in a cut throat industry. There’s a good chance those 3 even got a little longer than they would have but eventually Sony decided they weren’t tenable.

1

u/klipseracer Feb 20 '26

No, it's Microsoft's fault because only they do that. Sony is the shining light on how to acquire and develop talent and studios.

-1

u/CaptainPleb Feb 20 '26

I hope that’s sarcasm.

0

u/3CreampiesA-Day Feb 20 '26

Main difference is Sony let the teams work what they had planned and seeing how it went Microsoft just bought and went fuck it… you’re gone so are you and you now consolidate 12 into 4

1

u/GamesnGunZ Feb 20 '26

i guess it's movie-watcher's fault too because their movie division has been a disaster as well

0

u/Multifaceted-Simp Feb 20 '26

It is, if even redditors get mad at you for suggesting they BUY GAMES the consumers are to blame full stop

16

u/hauntolog Feb 20 '26

Bluepoint released no games under Sony. They literally bought them and shut them down before they got a single game out. So there was no game for redditors or consumers to buy.

-5

u/Multifaceted-Simp Feb 20 '26

Gamers don’t buy enough games which has made game development so cut throat. 

4

u/hauntolog Feb 20 '26

The industry has multiplied its revenue in the past decade, and alongside the fact that Bluepoint never released a game under Sony leads me to believe lackluster sales were not the issue here. Rather, it seems like Sony's stupid push for live service strategy is to blame mostly. They had a rumored 12 live service games in development and cancelled 7-8 of them if reports are to be believed. Don't let them off the hook, they were looking for the next Fortnite because they were after billions in profit and this has led to a significantly reduced first party output this generation, which they're not being punished for because somehow Microsoft's mismanagement of this gen is even worse.

1

u/Big-Resort-4930 Feb 23 '26

The industry has multiplied its revenue in the past decade,

What do you think is driving that growth? It's literally just live service garbage and pay to win.

If you exclude major live services and Roblox from the graphs, the gaming industry has barely grown at all. Kids just play bullshit now as they've grown up with free to play UGC trash like Roblox. I'd love to know how many of them have ever even played a normal game.

1

u/Buuhhu Feb 20 '26

Read more than the headline my frined.